


The Ancillus's Tale

by Chryse



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: "The Handmaid's Tale" AU, Always a happy ending!, M/M, NO MAIN CHARACTER MPREG, Omegaverse, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:27:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 54,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29201328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryse/pseuds/Chryse
Summary: Once Sherlock’s body had been his alone. He was free to treat it with great care or none at all; to live on cigarettes and coffee and cocaine and then sleep it all off for days on end. He was free to stay in and sleep alone or to go to clubs and choose someone to touch him, mark him with nails and teeth or to kiss him with sweetness and care, according to his whim. Every part of it had been his decision. No more. Now he was property of the Crown, tagged and marked like one of the King’s deer, to be bred like one of his horses.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 453
Kudos: 228





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it's the Handmaid's Tale/omegaverse mashup absolutely no one was waiting for! Just to be clear: this is an AU and not a crossover; you needn't have read "The Handmaid's Tale" (though you should). I just took the basic idea, transposed it from the key of religion to class, and omegversed it.  
> This fic contains the usual omegaverse consent issues around heat and so on, but there is definitely noncon as well--although really only one scene, and it's skippable. If you have questions feel free to hit me up at the ask box at askchryse@gmail.com.  
> This fic is fully finished though the posting schedule will be a little erratic (RL has changed a lot for me in the past few years) and will certainly have a happy ending.
> 
> NO MPREG for our boys. Here's how that conversation went:  
> Me: I have a great idea! I'm going to mash up "The Handmaid's Tale" and omegaverse!  
> Ancientreader: THAT IS THE WORST IDEA EVER WHAT ARE YOU THINKING  
> Me: :(  
> Ancientreader: ....well, maybe if there's no mpreg  
> Me: :D

_London_

_Now_

In the freezing darkness of midwinter, the ancillus who had once been known as Sherlock Holmes woke before dawn.

Sherlock swung his legs around and sat up as soon as he woke; if he didn’t, he knew from experience that the weight of despair would begin accumulating immediately like an extra blanket pressing him to the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and listened. Nothing below; overhead came the sound of footsteps dragging in the attic bedrooms. The maids were up. Judging by the slowness of the steps, it would be a good fifteen minutes before they went downstairs.

Sherlock stood and peeled off his pyjamas, folding them carefully and setting them aside in the dark. He pulled on his undergarments from the day before: linen vest and long drawers and socks. No shoes yet, not until the maids were safely downstairs. He stripped the bed, leaving the sheet and duvet bunched on the bare mattress, and then lowered himself quietly to the rug to stretch. The footsteps were noisier now, growing distant and returning, crossing over each other, quicker—back from the loo and more fully awake—and Sherlock went to the door to listen: there, he could hear a door open and shut and now the footsteps were all clattering away, the sound fading from overhead to become audible from the back stairs down the hall. Sherlock tilted his head, trying to distinguish the different patterns, but it was too hard at this distance. Silence fell.

Sherlock returned to his rug. He had an hour now before the Commander would be up, an hour in which no one was awake between him and the kitchens. Time to begin.

On the rug: crunches, pushups. Reverse crunches, lunges, squats. There was nothing in the room he could use as a pullup bar—because there was nothing in the room from which a noose could be hung—and nothing heavy enough to use as a weight; he turned the upholstered chair carefully on its side and used the short legs to do triceps presses. Chair back in position and back to the door, listening. Not yet. He drank a little water, back to the door. Noises now: voices from downstairs, the Commander’s heavy tread: he was going down to breakfast. Good. The maids would be tidying the room and making the bed now, but there would be two of them: they would be talking, not listening.

Sherlock rolled up the rug until it bumped up against the end of the bed and wedged his shoes against it to keep it unrolling. He looped the sheet around the bottom rail at the foot of the bed and sat down on the slick wood floor, bracing the soles of his stocking feet against the rug, and went to work on his makeshift rowing machine, using the sheet to pull himself forward and pushing back with his legs. His linen drawers slid easily on the polished floor. He was sweating now, more than warmed up in the chilly fireless room, but he kept going until he heard the Commander stomping back up to his bedroom, shouting something irritable to Mrs. Turner as he went.

Stop. Sherlock panted on the floor a minute, resting, then drank some more water and returned the rug to its original position. Over to the window, watching. He saw the car come around the corner, Hall getting out to open the door, the guard captain, Nicholls, coming out to speak to him briefly before the Commander appeared and settled himself officiously in the back of the car. The car drove away and Sherlock exhaled.

Back to the sheet. Sherlock retrieved his shoes and put them on—the shoes were fine leather, with thin soles, utterly unsuited for anything more strenuous than strolling down a city pavement, but Sherlock was not somewhat who needed to be taught a lesson twice. If he ran again— _when_ he ran again—he was not going to be slowed down by blisters. He twisted the sheet into a rope again and tied it to the bed, in a loop around his waist this time. The bed was iron and heavy for its size, which was good for Sherlock’s purposes; it was unlikely to slide. Sherlock faced the barred window and began to run in place. He could not run too hard against the sheet, but it was still better than nothing. Sherlock closed his eyes, set the timer in his head to an hour, and pulled up a location from his mind palace: the hilly farmland near his parent’s country house when he’d been a child.

Sherlock had never run those hills in reality. He never used to run at all, or to do any sort of workout beyond that involved in the martial arts he had studied. But now he had nothing but time, and determination; determination that if— _when—_ the chance came to run again, no one would catch him.

At the end of the hour, sweaty and tired, Sherlock slowed to a walk and then stepped out of the sheet. He untied it, shook the creases out, and remade the bed with careful precision. Then he stripped off his clothes, dropped them in the laundry hamper, put his pyjamas back on, and sat down to wait. Two minutes, breathing back to normal. Five minutes, sweat dried. Ten minutes and he began to feel chilly again. Just as he began wondering if he had gotten off on the time, he heard footsteps on the stairs and then, very distantly, the sound of a clock striking.

A key turned in the lock and Phillips, the valet-butler, stepped in, followed by one of the maids with a tray. She set the tray on the small table next to Sherlock’s chair and knelt silently to light the fire.

“Brother Bathsheba,” Phillips said. Phillips was a hard read, even for Sherlock; he had more or less decided that Phillips had actually been a butler forever, and had not even noticed the dramatic social upheaval that had taken place around him. “Good morning.”

“Phillips.” Sherlock poured tea and added sugar. The sugar, he knew, was precious; a privilege of living in the Commander’s household. It was a privilege he would have happily foregone, but since that option was not available, he enjoyed the sugar. A full breakfast was laid out on the tray but he would eat only the toast; he would not let himself go soft and plump like so many of the omegas, their very flesh a visible sign of their ostensible good fortune.

The maid—Meg today, the pretty one—bobbed a curtsey and left. Phillips was in the bathroom, running the bath and preparing his shaving things. Sherlock found the whole valet rigmarole absurd, but then he certainly wouldn’t be allowed to wield a razor himself, so he went along.

Finished with his tea and toast, Sherlock suffered himself to be shaved and then took his bath, which he might have enjoyed more if he were not so aware of Phillips moving about in the bedroom. When he’d finished drying off, he towel-dried his hair as best he could, knowing it was hopeless, and then pulled on his fresh underthings and stepped out to where Phillips had laid out his clothes. The long white linen robe first, lined for winter, with a cowl that he pulled up over his damp hair. Over that the real mark of his status, the long red woolen surplice with its full sleeves and cord belt. The whole effect was reminiscent of a medieval monk, which was more or less the point. The cowl would cover his head at all times, even in his own room; when he left the house he would wear the full-length red cloak with its enormous stiffened hood, which shielded his face so effectively he could see (and be seen by) only someone standing directly in front of him.

When he was fully dressed Sherlock asked, “Time, Phillips?”

“I believe there are ten minutes until your companion is due to arrive, Brother Bathsheba.”

Sherlock nodded. “Very well then.”

Phillips withdrew with the tray. Sherlock sat in his chair, waiting for the time to pass until it was time for him to go downstairs. Waiting for something to happen, for something to change, for anything, anything at all to make this day different from those that came before it and those that would came after, until either he escaped or was driven slowly, inexorably mad.

Sherlock was surprised when he came downstairs to find Molly already waiting in the foyer. She was standing perfectly correctly: hands tucked inside her sleeves, head lowered so he could not see her face. Like him, Molly was wearing long red robes and cloak, but instead of a cowl and hood she wore a linen cap under a starched white headdress with sharply angled side panels, like an old-fashioned nun.

“Good morning, Brother Bathsheba,” Molly said brightly, tipping her head up to see him on the stairs. “It’s a lovely day.”

“Sister,” he acknowledged dryly. “Is it?”

Phillips held the door for them and closed it as they went out, setting off toward the Veilgarden District. “You’re early,” Sherlock said as soon as they were reasonably alone.

“Well, I know you like to get there early. And it _is_ a lovely day for all it’s so cold—I feel I haven’t seen the sun in ages. I can’t wait to go to the park this afternoon. You should come as well,” she said, wheedling.

“It might just be cold enough for hell to freeze over, so perhaps I will.”

“Didn’t you ask your Commander?”

“He’s not _my_ Commander,” Sherlock said through his teeth. “And I did ask. He said I was free to go walking whenever Mrs. Turner was at leisure to accompany me, which is never. Mrs. Turner doesn’t believe in either leisure or in doing anything which might make me happy.”

Molly walked on in silence for a moment. “There was a memorandum, from the Ministry of Health. We’re to be encouraged to continue to get fresh air and exercise during the winter months. Your—Commander Pitts must have seen it, so maybe if you ask again?”

“Perhaps.” Sherlock did not believe in irrational optimism. Still…once he returned he would be sitting in his room for the rest of the day, nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing but his mind place for distraction. It might be worth another attempt if there were any chance of success.

They were quiet the rest of the way. St. George’s Cathedral was the oldest and grandest of London’s high society churches and thus, since the Restoration, the centre of omega life. Traditionally it was open exclusively to omegas between noon and three, so the midday service was widely attended; for most of the handmaidens it was their only chance to get out of the house. In his past life Sherlock thought he might have been there once—dragged to a society wedding by his parents—but now, lifelong atheism notwithstanding, he went every day.

At the door of the church Sherlock handed Molly his prayer book and they separated, Molly going on to the sanctuary whilst Sherlock veered off to the small chapel on the side. St. Elizabeth was the traditional patron of barren omegas, so it was reasonable that Sherlock, after two unproductive heats, should visit her chapel. A Bonded in an enormous plumed hat was already kneeling at the altar rail, so Sherlock slid into a seat to wait his turn, head lowered as though in prayer. The Bonded swept out a moment later, long skirt swishing on the stone floor.

Sherlock got up and went to the altar, glancing over his shoulder to be sure he was alone. He knelt and swiftly ran his fingers along the underside of the rail. Nothing. He had expected this—it was too early--but still felt a small stab of disappointment; there was always the hope of something unexpected left for him.

Finished, Sherlock went back out into the nave. The front pews were filled with Bondeds in every shade of blue—from dark navy and deep sapphire to palest winter azure trimmed with ermine—mostly dresses, but a few suits mixed in; ninety percent of omegas were female, with the reverse true of alphas. A hundred years ago the blue would have been liberally interspersed with white, eligible young omegas who were “out”: presented but not yet bonded. Today Sherlock saw only three.

The ancillae sat toward the back. Sherlock spotted Molly in their usual place—amazing how quickly one learned to recognize acquaintances without being able see their faces--but to his surprise she seemed to be talking to someone, an ancillus whose face Sherlock couldn’t see. As he slid in beside her he saw that the omega was pregnant.

“Sherlock, look!” Molly said happily, tilting her head toward him. “It’s Henry!”

Sherlock leaned out so that they could see each other and saw that Molly was correct: the man was Henry Knight. He had overlapped briefly with Molly and Sherlock at Sarah House and Molly had always liked him; she had wondered a few times what had become of him after he failed to appear in London. “Brother…what did they call you. Hosea, wasn’t it? How was the country? You’ve clearly been covenanted for some time.”

Henry nodded. “I’ve been there since I left the convent. The Commander I got was in the Foreign Service and he goes abroad a lot, so he requested a honeymoon.”

“But that’s an old wives’ tale!” Molly said indignantly. “Surely they didn’t—“

“Worked, didn’t it?” Henry said wryly, gesturing toward his midsection.

“What are you talking about? What do you mean, a honeymoon?” Sherlock asked.

Molly’s eye roll was audible in her voice. “Back in the old days—the really old days, the ones we’re supposed to be trying to get back to—people courted under the watchful eyes of parents and chaperones who made sure no one got too frisky before the wedding. The honeymoon was the first time most couples spent any significant time together and the idea was that it brought on the bonding heat, but really that’s all bosh. There’s _some_ biochemical evidence, but it was probably because the couples were attracted to each other in the first place and were sexually active on the honeymoon, and those hormone surges brought on the heat. And that sort of thing is supposed to be forbidden for us outside of--” Molly seemed to stumble over her words—Sherlock could _hear_ her blushing _\--_ but then went on in a rush, voice growing stronger: “So the idea that just a few weeks together without, er, unless he broke the rules…”

“Definitely not,” Henry said, grimacing. “We went to his country place but I barely even saw him; he was shut up in his study the whole time working. I only saw him at dinner. It was almost like being back home, only without my mother, which honestly was an improvement. I really thought the whole thing was going to be a bit of a bust, to be honest, but we’d been there just over a week and all of a sudden…” he grimaced, gesturing toward his belly again. “Heat came on and there I was, up the pole.”

“But,” Molly began indignantly and then seemed to cut herself off again. The organ began to play softly, indicating the service would start in a few minutes.

“I assume you stayed in the country?” Sherlock asked. This was another resurrected Victorian custom; expectant omegas often spent most of their pregnancies away from the city on the theory that rural air was healthier.

“Yes. It was deadly dull. I’m quite glad to come here, even if I do have to sit in my room most of the time; at least there’s the chance to get out and talk to someone once a day.”

“Your Commander must have quite a bit of pull if he was able to request a honeymoon,” Molly said suddenly. “You said he was in the Foreign Ministry?”

Henry shrugged. “He might _be_ the Minister for all I know. It’s not as though I greet him in the lounge every night with a cocktail and ask after his day.”

“What’s his name?”

“Moriarty,” Henry said. “James Moriarty.”

Molly changed the subject after that, telling Henry about the social hour after the service and the classes the Cathedral would be offering soon. During the tea and biscuits after she asked Henry about his pregnancy, which bored Sherlock so thoroughly he stopped listening altogether. He watched the others instead: who talked to whom, which Bondeds in particular seemed smug, or anxious, or distracted. He knew the others valued the social interaction but except for Molly that held little value for him. Sherlock needed the chance to observe, to deduce, to use his brain; like oxygen after holding his breath all day in the stultifying dullness of his room.

They said good bye to Henry and his walking companion at the high gates of the district and turned toward their own street, walking in silence for a few minutes until they were well clear of the guards. Sherlock was waiting for Molly to bring up Moriarty—bracing for it, really--when Molly suddenly burst out, “I can’t believe Henry actually fell for that honeymoon heat nonsense.”

“Are you on about that again?” Sherlock said, exasperated. “What does it matter?”

“Because it’s bollocks! There’s no way that actually worked, so that means Moriarty must have induced it.”

Sherlock was taken aback. “Is that even possible? How—“

“Of course it’s possible, it was quite common as a fertility treatment before. Totally illegal now though. The omega takes high dose hormones for seven days—you can take them orally; that’s probably what those dinners were really about, Moriarty slipping them into Henry’s food—and then stops. It’s the withdrawal brings on the heat. Usually happens within twenty-four hours. You heard what he said, right? Just over a week and bang. An induced heat comes on quite suddenly, not like they usually do, and they tend to be shorter but more intense, I think.”

Sherlock turned to look at her but of course all he saw was the stiff white panels of her headdress. “Moriarty was taking quite a risk, then.”

“Only if he was caught with the drugs. It’d be hard to prove otherwise.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to ask why but of course that was obvious: the whole point of the Order of Ancillae was to increase the secondaries’ birthrate; siring children was an enormous status boost for alphas. Still…

Molly turned her head and now he caught a glimpse of her worried eyes. “When you weren’t covenanted to him…”

“He gave up. Obviously. Chose the next high-status ancillus available and got him in the family way. Didn’t waste any time moving on, did he?”

“No. And he seems to be treating Henry all right, I suppose. It must be a relief to you?”

Sherlock did not want to admit, even to Molly, how much the thought of Moriarty had weighed on him, lessened though the weight had become with every month that he did not reappear. And he certainly did not want to admit that the thought of Moriarty using illegal methods to impregnate his handmaiden so quickly did not come as a relief. It did not come as a relief at all.

_London_

_Before_

“Are you a student of history, Sherlock?”

“Not particularly,” Sherlock said. It was a warm evening in June and the windows were open in his flat on Montague street, the sound of traffic and voices drifting up from outside. “I read chemistry at university.”

“I read history,” Gregson said. “Liked it rather well; thought about making a go of it as an academic, in fact, but.” He lifted one shoulder. “Seemed a bit dull. Ivory tower and all. Still, I keep my hand in a bit, read quite a lot, last century in particular. ”

“Mmm.” Sherlock had no interest in Gregson’s previous career aspirations, but he would get to his point in his own good time.

Gregson leaned back and touched his fingertips together. He was a slender man, elegant, with a thick head of silver hair and an air of vaguely professorial abstraction that masked an eye almost as sharp as Sherlock’s. “And here’s what I’ve learnt, old boy, reading history. When they want to put your name on a list, it’s time to get out.”

“Are you talking about the omega registry?” Sherlock said. “But that’s absurd. It’s the Ministry of Health, they’re concerned about the decline in the omega population. They certainly aren’t out to exterminate us; they want to protect us.”

“Which is exactly why you should be alarmed. Protection is never free, Sherlock, it always comes with a price: privacy, freedom, choice. I don’t know what the price will be, but I doubt it’s one I shall want to pay.”

“So what are you going to do? Leave?”

“Yes,” Gregson said simply.

Sherlock stared at him. “And go where?”

“Toronto. I’m almost retirement age anyway; I’ve a friend there who’s put me on to a private security firm. I’ll work for a few years and then see how things are. If I’m wrong, I’ll come back and retire to the country, come up to London and buy you a drink. If I’m right…then find me in Toronto, if you’re able to make it out. I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock said. “You’re the Met’s least stupid detective inspector; you’ll be bored senseless in private security. And what about what’s his name? Oliver. Olivier.”

“Oscar,” Gregson. “And of course he’s coming too. He doesn’t fancy the idea of this registry any more than I do and besides, he’s still young enough to be valuable. How long do you think they’ll let omega-omega couples stay together? What with all this new emphasis on the preservation of our cherished aristocracy? It’ll be _Lebensborn_ all over again. Look that up if you deleted it.”

“That’s absurd,” Sherlock said again. “You’re overreacting. This is England, that can’t happen here; people won’t let it.”

“I do hope you’re right.” Gregson stood, straightening his jacket. “I anticipated you wouldn’t listen to me, so I’ve passed your name along to one of our new DIs, bright young chap name of Lestrade. Alpha, but not a bad sort. Clever enough to listen to his elders, unlike some, so he’ll be calling you.”

“I’m opposed to new people,” Sherlock said a bit sulkily. He’d rather liked Gregson, whose supreme self-confidence kept anyone from questioning Sherlock’s presence at crime scenes too forcefully; this Lestrade didn’t sound as though he carried the same authority. 

“You’ll get on well enough.” Gregson held out his hand and Sherlock took it, still glowering. “And Sherlock…do a favor for an old friend? Read a bit of history. _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ would be a fine start. Read about _Lebensborn._ Read about _Sonderweg_ and look at where the policies of these NeoTories might be taking us. And if you read nothing else, read about the Reichstag fire. Because then you’ll recognize when the last possible moment to run comes.”

“Fine,” Sherlock said, giving his hand a final squeeze. “Enjoy Toronto. I hear the winters are lovely. And I’ll be looking forward to that drink when you come back.”

Gregson smiled. “I hope so.”

Sherlock meant to read about the Reichstag fire, he really did. (Not a whole book, obviously, that was asking a bit much.) Because it was so easy to get information back then: all you had to do was hit a few keys, on the internet, and anything you wanted to know was there for the taking; and because it was so easy, and so easy to take for granted, be put it off a bit, and then the clever-enough Lestrade called him for a case and he turned out to be not a bad sort at all. It didn’t seem very urgent, because after all, it couldn’t happen in England. Until it did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I can tell, the Chief Superintendent from TRF ("Yer a bloody idiot, Lestrade!") never actually had a name, so I went with the actor who played him, Tony Pitts. Sorry about that, Tony, you're probably a really nice guy IRL.

“Should be posting the class signups today,” Molly said, picking up a biscuit and eyeing it critically. “D’you think there’s real sugar in these?”

“Classes,” Henry said, wrinkling his nose. “You’re giving me flashbacks to that wretched convent.”

“Oh, they’re better than that. Something to do at any rate. Sherlock did music in the Michaelmas term and he quite liked it, didn’t you, Sherlock?”

“Until the teacher topped himself.” The teacher had formerly been concertmaster for the London Philharmonic. Sherlock had not been allowed to have a violin of his own, of course—presumably the strings could too easily be turned to weapons—but the teacher had brought his own instruments and the handful of students had formed a ragtag chamber orchestra. For a few months it had been the highlight of his week.

“Right, I forgot about that. Poor thing. I suppose the Bondeds don’t have it much better than we do, really…oh look, they must be putting them out now.”

Sherlock followed Molly over without much enthusiasm. The traditional pastimes of male omegas—breeding horses and dogs, cultivating rose gardens—were largely unsuited to city life, and they wouldn’t be allowed any pursuit requiring a sharp tool. Still, anything was better than rotting away in his room. He stood at the back, surveying the signup sheets over the heads of the mostly female crowd: flower arranging, watercolors, knitting. A small knot had formed around one of the papers, blocking his view. “What’s that one there?”

“It’s a reading group,” one of the women said, a current of excitement in her usually flat voice.

“A _reading_ group? How can there be a reading group when we aren’t allowed to read?”

“We’re allowed as long as the material’s approved,” another woman said, working her way forward. Sherlock knew who she was—she was Sister Bertha of Kent now, but he’d worked out that before the Restoration she’d been a professor at the London School of Economics. “But that great lump I’m covenanted to doesn’t even own any books. I’m not quite certain he can read at all.”

“It’s sure to be all dross and propaganda.”

“Don’t care,” the woman said, adding her name. “It’s something new to read. I’ve already memorized the Book of Common Prayer; ask me what the reading is for tomorrow.”

“Acts chapter two, verses one through eleven,” Sherlock said.

Sister Bertha of Kent laughed, holding out the pen. “Bloody hell! I was joking.”

Sherlock hesitated, then took it. She was right: having something to read, _anything,_ would help the time to pass; if he were clever enough to get something to write with he might be able to remove the blank pages as well. He added his name to the list as well: _Brother Bathsheba, Household of Commander Pitts._

“Why didn’t you sign up for the reading group?” Sherlock asked Molly as they walked back.

“Oh. Well, you see Ir—Commander Adler—she’s told me I’m free to use her library whenever I like, and it’s quite large, so…I signed up for cookery instead. I never really learnt much about cooking before and I suppose it could come in handy.”

Sherlock could not see Molly’s face, of course, but he could hear the slight note of evasion in her voice. “Her entire library? That can’t all be approved for omegas, is it?”

“Why, are you going to tell your Commander?” Commander Pitts was head of the secret police. He’d been Chief Superintendent of the Met previously, a position he had attained, Sherlock assumed, through a combination of good fortune, obsequiousness to the right people, and bullying.

“Of course not. I’m surprised a Commander would give a handmaiden free rein like that, is all.”

“They’re not all power-mad, despots, you know,” Molly said very quietly. “Alphas.”

Sherlock didn’t try to keep the sharpness from his voice. “Then the others should be ashamed of themselves.”

They walked on in silence for a moment. The weather was still bitterly cold and heavily clouded, and a few fine spitty flakes of snow had begun to drift lazily down. Molly, with an artificial brightness in her voice that meant she was deliberately changing the subject, said, “At least you’ll have an excuse to go to the Veilgarden District tomorrow! We can go together, there’s a book I’ll need for the cookery class as well.”

“If the Commander gives me permission,” Sherlock said gloomily.

“Of course he will. It’s Lady Mandeville leading the class, just make sure to work that in at the beginning.” Lady Mandeville’s bondmate was extremely high up in the government. “She might take offense if you drop out.”

That was a good point. They separated at Sherlock’s house and Sherlock, sweeping past Phillips, said to him, “Need a word with Mrs. Turner, Phillips.”

“I believe she is in the dining room, Brother Bathsheba.”

Sherlock’s heart sank—if the Commander was planning to entertain that evening there was no chance of Sherlock meeting with him—but it seemed Mrs. Turner was supervising the replacement of the draperies, which had been taking down for cleaning. Everyone stopped to stare at him when he appeared in the doorway.

Sherlock’s relationship to the servants was somewhat murky. He was unquestionably their social superior, but also in effect their prisoner, and no one seemed to know how to treat him. Phillips responded with automatic deference to any tone of authority—rather like a dog, Sherlock thought—and the guards mostly ignored him; the maids always seemed torn between subservience and sniggering, and Mrs. Turner treated him as she might a spoilt child. “What do you want, Brother Bathsheba?” she said impatiently, hands on hips.

“Mrs. Turner,” he said smoothly. “I require a word with the Commander this evening, at his convenience of course.”

Mrs. Turner harrumphed. “I’ll tell him, but I can’t answer if he’ll have the time. He’s quite busy in the evenings.”

“Of course. Thank you, Mrs. Turner.” Not good enough; she’d wait to tell the Commander until too late, he’d put it off to the next day and then forget all about it. “Perhaps if you are at leisure when you have finished the draperies, we might take a stroll in the park?”

Mrs. Turner stared at him incredulously and then glanced out the window. “Have you gone mad? It’s coming down sleet out there now. And look at you, dripping those wet things all over the carpets!” She reached for the bell and when Phillips instantly appeared said crossly, “Mr. Phillips, see to Brother Bathsheba’s wet things at once and tell Cook to see that he’s given a hot drink. There’ll be no end of trouble if he catches his death.”

Sherlock turned away on the off chance that Mrs. Turner would catch his smile beneath his hood. He had her now: disappointing Sherlock had put her in a cheerful mood, and she’d pass the message on to the Commander.

Afternoons were the worst.

Sherlock’s room measured twelve feet by fourteen—he’d measured it many times, pacing it off almost every day to reassure himself, rationally, that the wall were not really closing in. It had once been part of the nurseries, and had white woodwork and wainscoting, with wallpaper above. The wallpaper was currently a pale neutral stripe, but Sherlock had picked at the corners and excavated at least six layers, including pink toile, blue sailboats, and a particularly hideous pattern of Edwardian cabbage roses. There was a single bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a chair, and a small table. The lamp was too light to use as a weapon and the table held nothing else but his prayer book. The bars on the window were solid iron, sunk so deep into the brick they would never come out, and the floorboards were sound; no hiding places there. But one of the panels of wainscoting pulled out to reveal a hole hollowed out of the plaster wall. This was not Sherlock’s handiwork—it had been made long ago, by a child maybe, or a nursemaid; the hole when Sherlock found it had contained three very old gold sovereigns and a scattering of mouse-shredded paper that might have been letters or a packet of sweets—but he made use of it, as much as he could.

There was no shortage of things a clever mind could convert to a weapon. The float arm of the toilet could be sharpened to a point; he could break the lightbulb; the aluminum rod in the wardrobe—whilst too light to support his weight—could stun if swung with enough force. None of it would do him any good. He did not need a weapon to escape; he could pick Mrs. Turner’s pocket and get her keys easily, and evading the guards was child’s play. Getting free of the house was not a problem but getting out of London…that would be a different matter altogether. Even if he managed to procure clothing, without suppressants any alpha who came within scenting distance would know Sherlock for what he was instantly, and since alphas, unlike omegas, were plentiful, he would encounter them everywhere—any prominent citizen or guard captain would be a risk.

So Sherlock was trapped. But not forever. Something would change, something would shift—he would _make_ something change—and he would have his chance, and when the chance came, he had to be ready.

So. Sherlock closed his eyes against his cold empty room, the gray sleety gloom outdoors, and readied his mind palace. Honing his mind was at least as important as honing his body. Maps first: he called up every road map he could remember, tracing the routes out of London, north, south, east, west. Routes to the coast and to other cities. The memories were imperfect and incomplete, but he could not afford to forget any of it, so he mentally followed them over and over again. Stars would have been helpful but he had never learnt them; he had to remember to look for a book like that at the bookseller’s tomorrow. When he had exhausted his store of maps Sherlock moved on to edible plants, poisonous plants, poisons he could make using common household items (it was satisfying to imagine Mrs. Turner dying in various horrible ways), the periodic table, formulae for chemical reactions. It was all as pointless and time consuming as a prisoner reciting prayers, but it kept his mind from fraying itself to bits as slowly, slowly, the long grey hours ticked toward evening.

Sherlock was concluding that he’d been forgotten, either by Mrs. Turner or the Commander, and beginning to consider whether it was worth simply marching downstairs and presenting himself at the Commander’s study. He wasn’t locked in yet, after all, and there really wasn’t a reason why he couldn’t…he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and exhaled in relief. The footsteps were quick, so probably Tilly. She was the thin, careless one.

He was right. “Mrs. Turner says you’re to come to the Commander’s study,” Tilly said, bobbing a sloppy curtsey—all of Tilly’s curtseys seemed ironic. “You done with that tray? I’ll have the fire going when you come back.”

Sherlock nodded and collected his great red cloak, settling its folds around him as he made his own, slower way downstairs. The door of the Commander’s office stood ajar and he could see Mrs. Turner standing at attention off to the side.

Sherlock gave the door a brisk knock and stepped in, waiting until the Commander glanced up before he spoke. Important to speak first; once the Commander opened his mouth Sherlock would have a hard time holding his tongue, and he didn’t want to risk antagonizing him tonight. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, Commander. As you are no doubt aware, bondmates of some of the city’s most illustrious families are undertaking to offer instruction for the edification of the ancillae. Lady Mandeville is leading a reading group and I need permission to go to the Veilgarden District tomorrow after noonday prayer to purchase the necessary books. I will be accompanied by my companion, so Mrs. Turner will suffer no inconvenience.”

The Commander sat back, narrowing his already narrow eyes. The Commander was a round man with thinning hair and unflattering glasses; a little like Mike Stamford, but the Commander’s face was hard and suspicious where Mike’s was friendly and open. _Had_ been friendly and open. Sherlock saw the curl of his lip and sighed inwardly, knowing what would come next.

“Reading group?” The lip curled up fully now. “What d’you lot need with a reading group? Don’t hold with reading for omegas. Clutters up the mind, distracts you from your duties.”

Sherlock wanted very badly to point out that the Commander did not appear to hold with reading for alphas either, at least where he himself was concerned; also that at the moment his only duty was to sit in his room all day and wait to be impregnated, but he clamped his teeth down on his tongue and held it. The Commander would not want to give offense by appearing to block Sherlock’s taking Lady Mandeville’s class; he would work that out himself in a minute.

“Still, if it’s got Mandeville’s seal of approval…all approved books, I suppose? Didn’t know there was a bookshop in the District.” He turned to his computer and Sherlock felt the familiar itch of longing in his fingertips. No chance of the internet, not anymore, that was firewalled to the point that it might as well not exist, and even the limited networks that remained were off limits to all but the highest echelons. “Hmpf. Looks like my lads vetted it, must be all right then. Very well, you can…wait, who’s this companion?”

Sherlock sighed again and unstuck his teeth from his tongue, tasting a rush of blood. “Sister Mary the Virgin, of the household of Commander Adler.”

The Commander’s lip curled slightly again and Sherlock, again, read his mind easily: the Commander was just the sort to find a female alpha intimidating and therefore suspect, but he could hardly voice that opinion; the current PM was a female. “All right, then, Mrs. Turner will give you a pass. See that you’re back on time and don’t put her out.”

“Of course, Commander,” Sherlock said, and turned to sweep out ahead of Mrs. Turner. That was one advantage to the cloak; it allowed for even better swishing than his beloved coat even had.

“Come along and I’ll give you your pass,” Mrs. Turner said, pulling the door shut behind her. She sounded uncharacteristically un-annoyed, which mystified Sherlock, until she said over her shoulder, “I’ve heard tell there’s a bakeshop in the District. They can get things the regular shops can’t, even for the Commanders, not officially…they say they’ve real vanilla, and spices, and even chocolate now and again.”

Sherlock had not seen chocolate in years. He had little idea how the Empire’s various wars were going—his only access to the news was the occasional glimpse of newspapers, or mention of some action or other requiring prayers during Sunday services—but one could make a guess based on what arrived on the tea tray: tea in abundance, sugar for the elite only, coffee ditto, and spices, apparently, were scarce. Didn’t vanilla come from Madagascar? Where _was_ Madagascar? Never mind: Sherlock was not immune to the attraction of a tasty sweet himself, and Cook was not very knacky at making do with what she had.

“And Commander Magnussen’s coming for dinner tomorrow and no fruit to be had these days; if we have to give him boiled custard again with that artificial vanilla….” Mrs. Turner was saying.

“Shall I stop by the bakeshop and see if I can find something then?” Mrs. Turner was never going to come right out and ask him, and getting on her good side could only help him in the long run.

“That would be quite nice,” Mrs. Turner said crisply. “Here we are. Wait just a minute.”

They had arrived at a small office-type room off the kitchen, windowless and with an assortment of invoices, reminders, and schedules tacked to the walls in a surprisingly haphazard way. Sherlock couldn’t help looking around covetously: so much _paper_!

Mrs. Turner had pulled a sheet of printed paper from a drawer and was busily filling it in: name, address, Veilgarden District, date. She handed it to Sherlock and said, “Now mind you bring that back, paper’s dear these days.”

“I will,” Sherlock promised. He was itching to get the paper back up to his room and read it, just for the few moment’s diversion the words would afford him; the chance to read something new, anything, was like water when one was perpetually thirsty. And tomorrow he would be in a whole bookshop! “Thank you.” He said it sincerely, and Mrs. Turner looked up at him for a moment with something less than her usual scorn before she scowled and said, “Mind you’re not late coming back, now.”

The Veilgarden District was one of the oldest neighbourhoods in London. It ran between St. George’s Cathedral and the Garden proper, the traditional omega shopping district since the days when omegas actually wore veils in public. By the time Sherlock was born the high walls had been merely a curiosity, like Tower Green, but now they were restored to their original purpose: to keep alphas and lower classes out and omegas in.

Sherlock and Molly showed their passes to the guard at the gate and Molly led the way through the narrow streets to the bookseller’s.

“This is fun,” Molly said, turning her head from side to side in an effort to see her surroundings. “Much better than going straight home! Do you think you’ll be allowed to come again?”

“Probably depends on the quality of pudding I bring back from the bakery,” Sherlock said drily.

“We’d best get a good one then…oh, here it is.”

The bookshop was small but apparently quite popular: two Bondeds were talking to the beta at the till whilst another waited her turn, a stack of books in her arms. Sherlock drew a long breath through his nose, smelling the dusty-sweet familiar scent of old books, and longed to simply disappear among the shelves, as he so often had in the library at school. Of course, he’d been small for his age as a child; harder to disappear when one was six feet tall and wearing a scarlet cloak with a hood the size of a pup tent.

“I’ll be right with you, dears,” the shopkeeper said brightly.

Sherlock turned to look at the shelves. So many books! He felt as though he could get drunk on just reading the spines. Unfortunately, most of the books seem to cover the same trite nonsense as the cathedral courses: childrearing, interior decorating…books on art, which might have been interesting if Sherlock cared anything about art. He found what appeared to be a male interest section with a selection of books on horse breeding and wine cellaring, but no chemistry or crime and, disappointingly, no conveniently updated road atlas of the British Isles.

The bell jangled as the last Bonded left and the shopkeeper asked, “Here for the reading group books?”

“He is, I need the one for the cookery class,” Molly said.

“I’ve got it right back here, and here—“ the woman hefted a stack of books beside the till, “—here’s the ones for the reading group.”

The reading group books were, as Sherlock had suspected, a dispiriting lot. _Daily Devotions for Omegas, Light From Many Lamps,_ some insipid fiction _—_ oh, this looked slightly more promising, _A History of St. George’s Cathedral and the Veilgarden District._ It triggered a memory buried deep in Sherlock’s mind and he asked, “Have you any other books on history?”

“Any type in particular?”

“I was hoping to find _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich._ I’d always meant to get around to it before and never did.”

The woman shook her head regretfully. “I couldn’t carry that here, I’m afraid, But if you like…all my books were vetted by the Guardians, and I don’t carry any on the banned list, but I’ve a fair amount in the back that aren’t on the preferred list for omegas but aren’t banned either, if you follow. So I can’t guarantee you’d be allowed to read them but…”

“Please,” Sherlock said, almost salivating at the thought of books he wasn’t supposed to read.

The shopkeeper led the way through the doorway to a large dim room, crowded with books double-stacked on shelves, in boxes, on the floor and piled high on the windowsill. “Back here,” she said, edging past a pile that seemed perilously teetery. “Ah, here we are then, here’s the histories.” She sounded almost happy, without the careful politeness she’d shown in the shop, and Sherlock looked at her properly for the first time and saw the woman she had been before: graying hair cut fashionably short, flowing trousers and long chunky necklaces, her love of books and of readers shining through every interaction in her shop. Now she was dowdy and ill at ease in her long dress and unflattering bun. Worse, she lived in fear every moment of her life of running afoul of the secret police.

“Thank you. Do you mind if I just look around a bit?”

“Of course not.” Her smile was warm. “You take your time now, dear.”

In a few minutes Sherlock had pushed his hood back—he’d hear the bell if anyone came in—to see better and was sitting cross legged in spite of the dust, pulling books out of the bottom shelf. He found a reasonable substitute fairly quickly: _The British Empire in the World Wars._ Probably jingoistic propaganda, but surely they’d have the basic facts? He poked around the history section for a while longer in hope of finding something with maps, but the closest he came was a glossy photo book of rural rail stations. Then he found a book about Jack the Ripper.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock looked up, blinking a little in disorientation. Molly was smiling at him indulgently from the doorway. “We’d best be off if you want to get to that bakery.”

“Right,” Sherlock said, scrambling to his feet with the precious books in his arms.

“And put your hood up!”

“Right,” Sherlock said again, pulling it back into place.

Sherlock put the books on Commander Pitts’ account. Under the guise of arranging them more efficiently in his carrier bag he pulled the dust jackets off _Warm Milk for the Omega’s Soul_ and _The Red Tent_ and slipped them over the two books he’d brought from the back room. There: should pass muster as long as no one looked at the covers too closely. The thought of having books to read, something to do in the endless winter afternoons besides retrace routes to the coast in his head, made him feel lighter than he had in months.

The bakeshop was bustling and warm, windows steamed against the winter chill. When Sherlock opened the door the man behind the glass display case looked up and met his eye, and for an instant the man’s face tightened in a strange expression Sherlock couldn’t quite read. Then Sherlock stepped down into the shop and his hood blocked the man from sight.

“Mmmm, smell,” Molly said rapturously.

Sherlock did. Mrs. Turner’s intelligence had been right: he caught whiffs of cinnamon and nutmeg and even, incredibly, coffee. Through a pair of glass French doors he could see a tearoom overlooking the winter-bare Garden, filled with Bondeds in pairs and clusters.

“Is that _coffee?”_

“It is, but we’ll have to wait at least another twenty years to get it,” Sherlock said. There was a placard displayed prominently from the Ministry of Health, sternly warning that only omegas past childbearing age could be legally served alcohol or coffee.

When their turn came a cheerful woman a little older than Sherlock said, “What’ll it be, love? Sorry,” she said quickly as the man appeared beside her. “Sir. Brother.”

“Tam, go get some more boxes out of the back,” the man said. “Yes?”

“Chocolate pear and almond torte, please,” Sherlock said. Any sort of chocolate seemed too showy to pass up.

He watched the man covertly as he pulled the cake out and boxed it. The man seemed hard in a way incongruous with running a bakery; former Army, Sherlock would have thought once, but no one left the Army any more except to join the Guardians. And why had the man looked at him like that, almost as though he knew him? Did Sherlock know him? He didn’t look familiar. Or did he? Where would Sherlock have known a hard-faced beta?

The man slid the box across the case and asked, “What account?”

“Commander Pitts’.”

“And could we have two teas, please, and some of those chocolate macarons,” Molly piped up. “Put them on Commander Adler’s account.”

The man nodded, not looking at her, and Molly and Sherlock squeezed onto a narrow bench that ran along the side of the shop.

“Mmm, now _this_ is real sugar,” Molly said, biting into her macaron.

Sherlock was still watching the hard man. The police? Not one of Lestrade’s…the door opened and a burst of damp air struck his face and with it came a memory: a night a long time ago, two lifetimes in fact, one of the times he’d been picked up by the police. He’d been speedballing, probably, completely out of his mind. One of Mycroft’s minions always bailed him out eventually. He’d been sick in the police car, or possibly that was the night he simply passed out. Something about the hard faced was connected to the memory. That must be it, the man had been with the police and had arrested Sherlock long ago. Officers had good memories for faces.

Satisfied, Sherlock picked up his biscuit, nibbling at the edge to make it last longer, and turned his attention to what he could see of the tea room. So much easier to deduce when he could see the Bonded’s faces.

_Sarah House_

_Then_

“What’s your name?”

“Brother Benedict,” Sherlock said without looking up. He’d been at Sarah House less than a week, still feeling weighted down and unaccustomedly clumsy in the long white robes, but it had taken only a few days to break him of his initial refusal to use his new moniker. The abbesses all carried cattle prods.

“No, what’s your real name? Mine’s Molly Hooper.”

Now Sherlock looked at her. The woman walking next to him on the gravel path was outwardly a model of propriety: hands tucked in her white sleeves, hair demurely smoothed back beneath her linen cap, but there was a spark in her brown eyes that lit an answering warmth in the cold empty space inside him. “What’s your order name?”

“Sister Mary. That would be Mary the original blessed miraculous heatless virgin, by the way, not to be confused with any of those other inferior Marys.”

“Yes, imagine being Mary the Mother of James the Less.”

“Quite. You’ve just arrived?”

“Five days ago.”

“I’ve been here nearly a month…what do you think they’re going to do with us?”

Sherlock glanced at her again. “The NeoTories want to restore the British Empire to her Victorian imperial glory. They believe that restoring the secondary aristocracy is somehow key to this, having confused concurrence with causality as idiots so often do, and think that increasing the secondaries’ birth rate is essential to perpetuating said aristocracy, which is at least somewhat logical. The government has spent months trying to convince us that we few remaining omegas have a sacred obligation, a _duty,_ to perpetuate the master race, and now they are corralling unbonded omegas—note that I don’t say single; many were previously in relationships with betas or other omegas, relationships that have now been outlawed by the state—and are embarked on an even more vigorous scheme of brainwashing us. You don’t seem stupid, Molly Hooper. You know what they’re going to do with us.”

He expected her to react angrily or become upset, but Molly only nodded. They reached the end of the path and turned to follow the edge of the gardens. It was an unfairly beautiful summer’s day, bees humming lazily in the warm air.

“I do know,” Moly said finally. “But the devil’s in the details, isn’t it? I suppose I was hoping for something a bit more _Blind Date_ and a bit less…agricultural.”

Sherlock did smile then, just a quick twitch, but it had been so long that he barely recognized the feeling.

“Tell me your name now?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” Sherlock said, barely suppressing the automatic flinch.

“Sherlock,” she said, trying it out. “What did you do before, Sherlock?”

“I was a detective. You?”

“Really? Forensic pathology.”

“Ah.” Sherlock turned his head to grin fully at her, knowing they were as far from the abbesses as they were ever going to be. “Were you? Tell me some stories then, Molly Hooper.”


	3. Chapter 3

On the day classes were scheduled to begin, the bossy Bonded who always seemed to feel herself in charge of everything stood at the front of the social hall and said crisply, “If I may have your attention, please,” in a manner that suggested this was not a request.

Everyone turned obediently, Sherlock thinking that his hood occasionally had its merits in terms of blocking his eye roll from view.

“We are delighted that the interest in classes this winter quite exceeded our expectations,” the Bonded said. Sherlock wondered whether she was actually referring to some sort of committee, or merely felt her authority had somehow elevated her to royal status. “In fact, due to the covenantings that took place in December, the response was so enthusiastic as to exceed our available space for some offerings. We have therefore added a few classes and have made reassignments as necessary. I am sure those of you who may be disappointed will nevertheless…”

Sherlock tuned her out, knowing the reading group must have been oversubscribed; it had been by far the most popular offering. When the woman finally finished the ancillae surged forward to see the new lists; Sherlock and Henry hung back, being taller than most of the others and able to see the wall over their heads.

“Damn it,” Henry said, “I’ve been put in ‘Preparing for Childbirth’. Do they not understand denial?”

Sherlock had been scanning the class sheets with a steadily sinking heart. Sure enough, there was his name on the last page he checked. Were they serious? “Would you like to trade? I’m in Decorative Needlework.”

Molly gave a snort of laughter. “You’ll be brilliant at that. Make me a hankie?”

Sherlock shot her a glare that of course Molly couldn’t see and then turned his scowl on the wall. Decorative Needlework! He considered simply refusing to go, but then he would have to find a phone and convince Mrs. Turner to have him fetched back; ancillae weren’t allowed to walk alone. And if he refused to go to subsequent classes Molly couldn’t go either, and she seemed--bizarrely—genuinely excited about cookery. He was stuck. Sherlock shot the wall a final poisonous scowl and stomped off down the corridor.

Decorative Needlework was held in a small, parlor-like room on an upper storey. Several other ancillae were already there, looking morose; the Bonded in charge of the class turned and smiled as Sherlock entered. “You must be Brother Bathsheba. Please, have a seat.”

This wasn’t much of a deduction; Sherlock was the only male omega present, although the women didn’t look any happier to be there than he did.

“Welcome to Decorative Needlework,” the woman said, smiling around the room. Sherlock considered her, more out of habit than anything else: fair hair done up simply, dress high quality but not ostentatious; her erect posture and finishing-school accent suggested comfort in her role but she hadn’t been a society matron previously, not at all. “I’m Lady Smallwood. I know none of you signed up for this class, as I hadn’t planned on teaching it until this week, but I hope to convince you of the value and joy to be had in embroidery by the time our time together is over. Previously, when I was foolish enough to work outside the home, I experienced a great deal of stress—far too much stress for an omega, I realize now—and found needlework to be a lovely and productive way of relaxing when time permitted. Now that I am at leisure…”

Hmmm. What kind of stressful work had Lady Smallwood done before she’d been exiled to the domestic sphere? She’d clearly been in a position of some authority. Sherlock watched her covertly, but if there were marks of her former profession to be found, she’d left it too long ago for him to find them. There was something about her almost deliberate blandness that made him think of high-stakes negotiators; a solicitor? A businesswoman? Something in which she was well-versed in giving nothing away. Lady Smallwood was now lifting various embroidered objects up for display: a christening gown, some sort of table runner…would anyone notice if he fell asleep?

“So we’ll be able to start on some lovely projects of your own quite soon, but for now, let’s begin with the basics, shall we? I’ve provided each of you with some practice materials by your chair. Now we’ll begin with the running stitch. Watch as I demonstrate the technique, then try it yourself.”

Lady Smallwood held up a hoop and needle and then pointedly looked at Sherlock until he sighed and picked up his own needle. He obediently made a few running stitches and back stitches, then watched as Lady Smallwood held up a sampler and explained how these could be used to form letters and numbers. “See if you can stitch your own name.”

Sherlock was not about to embroider “Brother Bathsheba” on a piece of practice cloth, but the sampler gave him an idea. Starting with arsenic, he carefully stitched the structural formula of every poison he could think of until he ran out of room on the cloth.

“Lovely!” Lady Smallwood said, smiling down at his work. “And, of course, the really delightful thing about practicing needlework is that if you make a mistake, or just want to make some room to practice more, er, chemicals, it’s quite easy to pick it out.” She slide her own needle under a stitch to demonstrate and deftly pulled out the arsenic, handing the hoop back with a smile.

Sherlock stared at the cloth. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he was holding the means to write—a time consuming, laborious means to be sure, but with the decided advantage that it could be converted back to a pile of thread with no one the wiser. He glanced up at the table runner, and decided immediately that Decorative Needlework would not be a complete waste of time after all.

Sherlock went seeking Mrs. Turner in her little office and, finding it empty, went to the kitchen. There he found Cook, complaining over a sad-looking pan of vegetables to one of the kitchen girls, and the guard captain, Nicholls, reading the newspaper with his feet propped on the long table. Sherlock dipped his head and stared covertly at the headlines under cover of his hood: New Zealand, allegedly, had seen the light and followed Australia back into the bosom of the Empire. What would happen next, Sherlock wondered; would the navy head for the Americas now, or would it…

“Want something, Bathsheba?”

The words were a leer in Nicholl’s mouth. Sherlock felt a flush of anger and mortification flood his body like heat and he tipped his head, angling it so that he could give Nicholls the full icy weight of his contemptuous stare, raking the length of his black uniform with a quick glance. “Wouldn’t you be better employed checking the basements? You obviously haven’t inspected them properly in weeks; thieves could have made off with half the wine cellars by now, and no one bothers to check after the coal delivery—“

“Feet off the furniture, if you please, Captain Nicholls.” Mrs. Turner’s sharp voice came from behind him. “Have you some business here or are you merely cooling your heels? It sounds as though you have work to be doing.”

“Ma’am,” Nicholls said, lip curled. He stood slowly, as though to emphasize he did not have to follow Mrs. Turner’s orders, and snapped her a mocking salute as he sauntered out.

“And you, Brother Bathsheba? Do _you_ have business in the kitchens?”

“I came to ask for a pass to go to the Veilgarden District again,” Sherlock said. “My class was changed and I need new supplies. I could go to the bakery for you, if you like.”

Mrs. Turner frowned, glancing over at Cook. “We’ve no guests planned…”

“Be lovely to have a bit of a treat though,” Cook said wistfully. “There’s been next to nothing in the shops.”

Mrs. Turner hesitated, indecisive. She had a sweet tooth, Sherlock realized; she was thinking longingly of the pudding he’d brought back last week. Sherlock had not really noticed that his meals had become skimpier and more monotonous—food was never something he paid much attention to—but now, looking at the poor limp carrots and potatoes Cook was holding, realized things must have got bad indeed if even the Commanders’ households were feeling the pinch.

“Very well, just a small one,” Mrs. Turner finally said, turning with an air of decision. “Come along and I’ll write your pass.”

Up in his room, Sherlock dropped the pass and small work bag he’d been given on the table, shucked his cloak, and tugged back his cowl so he could scrub his fingers through his hair whilst he paced his tiny patch of floor. He still felt the anger and shame burning under his skin. Nicholls had had him during his heats, of course; he was an alpha, though not one of the elite; guard captains were only one step up from the soldiers who had to fight for the prize of a pass to the brothel at Sandringham. Nicholls had had him, and Nicholls acted—all available evidence to the contrary—as though Sherlock had loved it, and burned with the desire for Nicholls to have him again. He swallowed down bile, pushing the humiliation down with it and trying to feel only the clean heat of anger.

Once Sherlock’s body had been his alone. He was free to treat it with great care or none at all; to live on cigarettes and coffee and cocaine and then sleep it all off for days on end. He was free to stay in and sleep alone or to go to clubs and choose someone to touch him, mark him with nails and teeth or to kiss him with sweetness and care, according to his whim. Every part of it had been his decision. No more. Now he was property of the Crown, tagged and marked like one of the King’s deer, to be bred like one of his horses.

When Sherlock had entered the convent, he’d had a thorough medical examination and his blood had been taken for genetic tests. That he was omega was not in doubt—testing had been available for decades; it had been part of the NHS’ standard newborn screening since before Sherlock was born. He’d always known himself to be omega. The detailed tests had, he assumed, been genetic mapping to confirm his double-homozygous status. The inheritance of secondary gender was complex, but long before the genetics were understood male omegas had been highly valued for their ability to breed true: all of Sherlock’s children would be secondaries. When the tests came back, Sherlock had been taken back to the examination room and strapped to the table whilst a technician punched a red tag into the tender upper cartilage of his ear, and then he’d been given a white gown, a new name, and told he had the honor to be accepted into the novitiate of the Order of Ancillae.

“What does your tag say?” Sherlock asked Molly, pacing the gravel path on a cool summer day.

“3C. What about yours?”

“1A.”

They walked a few moments in silence and then Molly said what they’d both been thinking: “Well, one of us is fucked.”

“Fairly certain we’ll both be fucked,” Sherlock muttered and then they both laughed, silently and heads down to avoid notice, because it had still been funny back then, back before it was real.

Sherlock made his plans. At the needlework store he bought the class kit (he had high hopes for his own scissors, but they proved a disappointment: the ends curved so that he could not put out someone’s eye, or open a vein) along with extra practice cloth and a rainbow of silks. Then he bought a pile of handkerchiefs.

“Oh, will you monogram me a hankie?” Molly asked. Sherlock could tell she found the idea of him doing needlework hilarious, but was trying to hide it. “Just put M, I’m lucky that way.”

“When I get better,” Sherlock said vaguely.

He lifted Mrs. Turner’s keys from her reticule on the way back from church on Sunday, knowing she’d think they had gone missing whilst she was out. That night, he sat up, waiting, until Phillips knocked on his door and stuck his head round.

“Will there be anything else, Brother Bathsheba?”

“No,” Sherlock said without looking at him. Initially Phillips had seemed to think he should assist Sherlock in divesting himself of his robes and donning his pyjamas, but Sherlock had shut that down immediately: enough people touched him as it was.

“Very well, Brother.”

The door closed and Sherlock heard the key turn in the lock. He sat perfectly still, eyes fixed on the fire, listening to the sounds of the house settling below him. Finally, after everything below had been quiet for some time, he heard footsteps on the back stairs and then overhead, clattering and pausing and occasionally punctuated by the faint bang of a door. Silence descended.

Sherlock closed his eyes, set the timer in his head to an hour, and began organizing the new material he had read that day into his mind palace. He had finished the Jack the Ripper book and started on _The British Empire in the Great Wars_ , which was not as bad as he had expected, although still dull as toast. History was not a subject he found inherently interesting, which meant that absorbing it and learning from it took a bit longer than if he had set himself the task of learning particle physics, so at least it occupied the time.

At the end of an hour, silence still undisturbed, Sherlock opened his eyes and listened hard: nothing. He got up, moved silently to his hiding place, and removed the piece of wainscoting to pull out the keys. Careful to make no noise, he replaced the wainscoting, moved to the door, and unlocked it. Then he closed the door behind him and moved along the corridor to the top of the dark stairs and listened again. No one was moving, but from here he could hear the Commander’s stentorian snores rolling along the hallway below. Good; he’d know in a heartbeat if the Commander stirred. Sherlock crept down the stairs, minding the creaky ones, and then slid along the landing until he came to the Commander’s office. The landing was pitch dark—only the merest gleam of light shone up from the foyer below—and Sherlock had to feel his way through half the ring before he heard the snick of the lock turning.

 _Finally._ Sherlock opened the door and slipped inside, pausing to listen as he did so: he was now right next to the Commander’s bedroom, and the snores were still rattling away. Thank God, the desk light had been left on. Sherlock moved carefully to the desk, sliding his feet along the floor to test for creaks; he was in his stocking feet.

At the desk Sherlock eyed the computer longingly but he knew, as certainly as he knew the pitch and frequency of the Commander’s snores, that it would require a user name and passcode, and that he did not possess enough knowledge to work out either. Moreover, the computer would almost certainly lock itself after a given number of unsuccessful attempts, and even the Commander was not stupid enough to overlook that. On the other hand, he _was_ stupid enough to be the sort who stored his passwords on a bit of paper cellotaped to his drawer, Sherlock thought hopefully.

The drawer was locked, of course, but that was easily overcome; Sherlock got down on all fours (automatically hiking his pyjama legs up first, though it hardly mattered—he supposedly spent every morning devoutly on his knees anyway) and found a paper clip right away. Alas, the center drawer yielded no passwords. But it did have an extra set of desk keys, which made getting into the file drawers much quicker.

If Sherlock were honest with himself, what he’d really been hoping for was enough information about an organized resistance movement to allow him (but not the Commander’s secret police) to work out the identities of everyone involved, make contact, and pass information from the Commander’s files to them in the form of coded messages done in whitework on handkerchiefs. Then they would help him escape. It was a good plan. Unfortunately, if such an organization existed, it was doing a highly competent job of evading notice.

The files in the top drawer were mainly devoted to closed investigations. Sherlock found a file devoted to an underground railroad, which had successfully shuttled a good number of omegas out of the country early on, and he paged through it with a sort of morbid curiosity until he found his own name. It looked as though the misinformation he’d given after his recapture had held up; none of the people he’d lied to protect seemed to be listed in the file.

Sherlock sighed, listened to the Commander snore for a moment, and then slid the drawer closed. The bottom drawer was more promising, holding files for active investigations, and here Sherlock found a few references to what seemed to be a resistance movement: mentions of a white rose being displayed. Was the white rose a resistance symbol? How long would it take him to learn to embroider one? There was an extensive file on people who were believed to have been close to the exiled princes; well, that was interesting. King Charles had embraced the Restoration with either genuine conviction or the political savvy of a king who wants to keep his head attached, but his sons had been opposed; they’d supposedly gone in to exile in France, like the Duke of Windsor. Sherlock had not been in the habit of hobnobbing with royalty, so this held only an abstract interest for him. He put the file back and pulled out the next, which detailed concerns over possibly seditious activity in Scotland. The Scots had opposed almost everything the British had pushed through in the past few years, starting with Brexit, and their embrace of the new social order was less than enthusiastic. Sherlock grinned, reading yet another apologetic missive from Edinburgh detailing the difficulties of getting the locals to cooperate with the secret police. It sounded as though Commander Pitts were under pressure to increase arrests. That made sense; the Army was desperate for soldiers, and given a choice between the Army or execution, most of those brought in by the secret police were quite happy to don the uniform.

There came a pause in the Commander’s snoring and Sherlock froze, not even daring to close the file he was holding, until he gave a great snorting inhale and started back up again. Obstructive sleep apnea. Sherlock carefully slid the file back, thinking. The NeoTories had reestablished a rigid social hierarchy based on class and gender roles: secondaries on top, betas at the bottom; alphas in command, beta men in the fields, omegas in the bedroom and women in the kitchen. (They also preferred a pre-Industrial England of green fields and apple-cheeked milkmaids, with the manufacturing and factory work outsourced—to India, of course. That had accorded well with India’s view of its own role in the new world; hence the alliance, although Sherlock wondered if the Indian press portrayed England as the jewel in India’s crown rather than the other way round.) But with so many men gone to the Army many beta women had been allowed to continue in their former roles; they were better off than the omegas, in some ways.

Sherlock rubbed his eyes—the light was dim for such prolonged reading—and pulled out another file. This was interesting: it detailed what was apparently the blind-eye black market, officially outlawed but unofficially allowed. Sherlock flipped through, fascinated. So this was where his sugar came from, and the chocolate in the torte! He came across a thick sheaf of maps: the whole of England, then the United Kingdom, then county by county, all marked with routes, merchants, smuggler’s landings and other locations to which a blind eye should be turned. That could be useful, if… _maps._

Sherlock stared at the thick pile of pages. He measured them with his eye, then calculated how big the whole thing would be if all the counties were laid out in proper order, like a jigsaw puzzle. He thought about the back of the needlework shop, with its shelves of tea towels and baby bonnets and tablecloths, and chewed on his lip a moment. Very well. Plan B.

_His Majesty’s Afghan Territories_

_Now_

John Watson set down his empty petrol can and leaned against one of the Range Rovers, pulling away the cloth he had wrapped around his face so he could take a long drink of water. Around him most of the other prisoners had already returned, and were sprawled on the ground or leaning against the vehicles just as he was.

“Everyone back?” the captain asked, speaking to his lieutenant.

The lieutenant was looking out at the field through binoculars. “Two more coming now…and here comes Talbert, sir.”

The last two prisoners came up, tossed their empty petrol cans on the pile with the others, and leaned next to John at the Range Rover. The younger pulled off his helmet to scratch vigorously at his hair.

“You don’t want to be doing that,” John said without looking round. The boy scoffed, but very quietly, and after a minute he replaced the helmet.

Another Range Rover pulled up and four soldiers jumped out. “Are we clear?” the captain asked.

“Sir, I regret to report, the village is refusing to evacuate.”

“God damn it,” the captain said, irritated. “Do they understand we’re about to burn this field?”

“Collins advised them, sir.”

“Collins?”

Collins was very young, a skinny private clutching a Pashto dictionary. “Sir, yes sir, I believe they understand, but they said they won’t leave the village. If it burns they lose everything, they said. I think. Sir.”

“Can we take them out by force? How many are there?”

The first soldier grimaced. “We could, but…probably about a hundred, sir, maybe five or six alphas, fifteen or twenty beta males. A lot of women and children. It would take a lot of time, especially if they fight back.”

The captain scowled, glancing at the sun, which was already low over the mountains to the west. John sighed, straightened, and took a step forward. “Permission to speak, sir.”

The Captain glanced at him with surprise. “Yes?”

“Sir, I was stationed in this area for several years.” _Before._ “I speak Pashto fairly well. If the villagers are dead set against abandoning their homes and you give me an hour, I can organize them to dig a firebreak.”

The captain frowned, glanced at the poppy field, and then at the sun again. John could track his thoughts easily: he didn’t want to send a prisoner out on his own, but his orders were to get the field burnt and be back to the camp before nightfall, and it wouldn’t go well with him if he crisped a hundred civilians along with it.

“We’d need someone to go with you,” the captain said finally.

“Sir, I’ll go,” the skinny kid with the dictionary—Collins—said immediately.

“Fine,” the captain said, checking his watch. “You’ve one hour. Carry on then and the rest of you, take a rest.”

John climbed into the Range Rover and Collins threw it in gear immediately, swinging it around in a wide arc to skirt the edge of the field back around to the village. John wondered why he didn’t just drive over the poppies—they were about to burn them all up anyway—but part of him approved of the kid’s instinctive respect.

The village came into view, a drab cluster of buildings near a grove of trees. Most of the villagers seemed to be outside, milling anxiously around a pump in the centre where women were filling buckets as quickly as they could. John swung out before the Range Rover had come to a complete stop, looking through the crowd in an effort to identify the elders. A tall man with a long beard, clearly an alpha leader, pushed forward.

“Sir, I apologize for my rudeness, but time is critical,” John said in rapid Pashto. “The field will be burned in an hour. Are you certain we cannot assist your people to safety?”

The elder shook his head, speaking emphatically, and John translated for Collins: “He says that losing the crop is bad, but if they are forced to abandon the village, they will lose everything. They will stay and fight the fire.”

Collins nodded and John said, “Then we will help. Have you shovels? We need every alpha and strong beta to start digging a trench, there, between the village and the field. Keep the women filling buckets and have the children start soaking cloths in the river—sacks, shawls, whatever you have.” The river would be just past the grove of trees.

The elder narrowed his eyes suspiciously but then Collins suddenly reappeared at John’s side, holding a clutch of shovels, and said in awkward Pashto, “You need?”

The elder nodded to the men next to him and suddenly everyone was moving again: women pumping, kids scattering, men running to buildings to fetch shovels and joining the line that spread out across the wide road leading to the field. An old women shouted to a clutch of small children, herding them into one of the buildings. John planted his feet and swung the tip of his shovel into the hard earth. One advantage to prison camp: he was in the best shape of his life, and he soon had a respectable hole going. He sensed the time ticking down and dug furiously, not even lifting his head to check their progress, sweat trickling into his eyes. All around him he heard only the clang of shovels and, distantly, the cries of the women and kids calling to each other and they rushed back and forth to the river.

A shout went up and John paused, looking up to see smoke billowing out in the field. The firebreak was still not finished—more of a daisy chain of disconnected holes—and he shouted to the others, “Hurry! Hurry!” The villager next to him made a noise—almost a growl—and he glanced over to see her drive her shovel into the thin bridge of dirt separating their two holes. She was an alpha, and strong; in a few minutes the two of them had a respectable trench covering the widest part of the gap.

The smoke was getting thicker now and John turned to shout for water but a child was already there, running down the line tossing him a wet cloth to tie around his nose and mouth. More kids and women were running with the soaked sacks. John bent to his shovel again and the firebreak was almost finished when the flames reached them, roaring greedily with the petrol that had soaked the fields.

John backed up, dropping his shovel, and grabbed for a wet sack which he began using to beat the sparks leaping over the trench. He could hear shouting behind him and knew that they were beginning to beat the fire back, but then he felt a gust of hot wind and heard a new, ominous crackling: the fire had caught the grove of trees.

John looked around, trying to find the elder, but saw only the tall alpha woman. “Listen,” he said urgently, catching at her arm. “All the others, the old people and babies, they need to get out. Everyone not fighting the fire needs to get to the river, _now._ ”

She narrowed her eyes and then nodded and grabbed the shoulder of a young girl who was running up with an armful of wet shawls. She spoke to her quickly and the girl shoved her shawls into her hands and ran back, to the house where John had seen the old woman taking the children. He joined the others who were trying to put out the burning trees but kept half an eye on the village: the elder was there now, shouting at the older children to join the evacuation. The girl who had carried the message seemed to be arguing, wanting to stay, but the elder shooed her away and she stomped off toward the river resentfully. The elder shouted into the doorway of another house, and a woman appeared: not dressed like the others in loose-fitting trousers and tunic, but in long, finely embroidered robes with a thin veil covering her face. An omega, John realized. The omega turned behind her, gesturing, and a second figure appeared: small and slim, barely more than a girl, her long robes and veils all in white. They began to run, the older woman bunching up her long skirts.

So that was why they hadn’t wanted to evacuate. A virgin omega: she was probably worth more than the rest of the village put together, maybe even more than the lost opium crop; her bride price would be enormous. But if forced to leave the protection of her village she would have been snatched up immediately—maybe even by the British, if her skin was fair enough. No wonder the elders had been so stubborn.

The girl, hampered by her long gown and limited vision, was falling behind; as John watched she caught her foot on a stone and went sprawling. Without thinking John dropped his sack and sprinted. When he reached the girl he scooped her up, hearing her squeak of terror but with no breath to reassure her, tossed her over his good shoulder, and ran. The girl went limp, not trying to fight him. The scent of her reached his nose even over the smoke and his own sweat, a sweetness like flowers but intoxicating as whisky. He gritted his teeth and tried to breathe through his mouth. The path to the river sloped down but John went straight forward to the bank, where beneath him the older girls shrieked in the water, They were playing, he realized, and almost smiled; the water was up to their shoulders. He slid the omega girl into his arms—she weighed next to nothing—said, “Ready?” and then swung her out over the river. She landed arse first and came up giggling wildly, the other girls surging forward and shouting with delight. He let himself watch, just for a minute. The wide green river, the dappled shadow of the trees, the old women scolding from the muddy banks, the girls laughing and splashing. An unexpected return of childhood.

The girl runner from the village reached the tiny omega and hugged her and John turned away, jogging back to the band of burning trees. By the time he reached it the fire was out, beaten back by, as far as John could tell, sheer force of will. Villagers were still tossing water on the trees and a few bushes and baskets smoldered weakly, but the field had burnt itself out and was now a black and smoking ruin. The village was safe.

People began dropping their tools and whooping, loud and cheerful in the fading afternoon, and John saw Collins grinning broadly as men embraced him and shouted at him happily. John turned and spotted the elder, who was evidently coming over to thank him.

“Keep the girl in the river until we’re gone,” John said very quietly, when the elder leaned in to embrace him. “I won’t say a word. But I can’t speak for him.”

The elder’s eyes went wide and he glanced toward the river, clearly alarmed. John squeezed his shoulder and nodded, turning back toward Collins.

“Hey,” Collins said, flushed and smiling. “I’m not quite certain but I _think_ they’re offering us tea. Or perhaps food. Or perhaps a goat, I don’t know.”

“We can’t stay. It will be after nightfall when we get back as it is and we’re both going to catch it.”

Collins glanced up at the mountains in alarm. “Ah, bugger me, you’re right.” He looked sadly at the jostling villagers. “Sorry, mates, I would have loved to have had your food, ours is shite.”

John translated this, grinning, and there was a roar of appreciative laughter as they gathered up their shovels and climbed into the Range Rover. Collins tooted the horn and John waved out the window, soaking-wet children chasing after them as they drove away.

Collins was still smiling an hour later, dusky twilight settling over them as they bumped along the uneven road back to the prison camp. John sensed him glancing over and sighed inwardly, knowing the kid was wondering what John, an alpha and former officer, had done to land himself in the Army’s prison camp. For his part, he wondered what had possessed the kid to join the Army at all. Perhaps he was so young he didn’t remember a time when being born beta didn’t automatically consign him to a life in a permanent underclass. Or possibly, going by his accent, he would never have aspired to anything else anyway.

But when Collins finally spoke, it wasn’t to ask the usual questions. Instead he said, “Is that what it was like before? When you were, you know. When you were in before. Helping people?”

John looked out at the darkening hills, remembering when he’d been the boy’s age: ready to fight for Queen and country, save the world. Little did he know then that he would come to realize the uniform he wore was what the world needed saving from. Not even that long ago; ten years, maybe.

John answered without really answering. “When I was in before, I was a doctor. So, yeah. I helped people.”

Collins was quiet and John felt, obscurely, he owed it to the kid to say something wise and maybe not too bitter, but he couldn’t think of anything. Finally he just said, “There’s always a way to help people. You just…have to look for it. And to see them as people.”

Collins nodded as though John had said something profound and they rattled along in silence the rest of the way.

By the time they reached the camp it was full dark. John braced himself, but at the outer gate the guard just waved them through, and his hopes rose. Maybe they wouldn’t get called on the carpet after all. He’d missed dinner, but if he hurried he might be able to get a shower before lights out; he stank of sweat and smoke.

At the inner gate, though, a guard shone a flashlight full in John’s face and said to Collins, “Who’ve you got there? Is that Watson?”

“I’m John Watson, sir, yes,” John said, screwing up his eyes at the light.

“You’re to see the commandant, right now. You’re clear,” the guard said to Collins.

“Sir,” Collins said, looking over anxiously at John. John, not wanting to make any trouble for the boy, said crisply, “Right away, sir,” and slammed the door behind him as he climbed out.

The commandant. That was a bit higher up on the disciplinary food chain than John was expecting. And what were they going to even do to him? He was already doing hard labor at a prison camp and alphas weren’t subject to beatings. John squared his shoulders as he approached the low building and saluted to soldier on duty at the door: “Prisoner Watson to see the commandant.”

“Wait here,” the guard said, bored, and ducked inside.

John waited, wishing he’d gotten a chance to wash and change, and then the guard returned, followed, to John’s surprise, by the commandant himself.

“Watson,” the commandant said. “You’ve got a visitor.”

John must have looked completely blank because the commandant tipped his head impatiently and said, “Well, go on,” and walked off.

John remained at the door for a minute, trying to get his head around it: a visitor? At a prison camp? In _Afghanistan?_ before he gave up and pushed open the door.

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. Because aside from anything else, he’d assumed the man in the black uniform to be dead.

“John,” the man said warmly, standing.

John did not move. “Major Sholto.” His voice was devoid of expression.

Sholto regarded him for a long, considering moment, then lowered himself back into his chair. “Have a seat, Sergeant Watson.”

It wasn’t a request. John sat.

“It’s good to see you again,” Sholto said. “Bit of a surprise, this, I suppose.” He gestured at his uniform.

“Bit of a surprise to see you at all,” John said coldly. “I thought you’d die before you’d fight for them.”

Now Sholto’s eyes narrowed. “And why is that?”

“Because you had more integrity than any officer I ever knew. And you opposed everything they stood for. You were as bent as I was, don’t you remember? Because I sure as hell do.”

Sholto’s face darkened. “The Royal Guardians serve England. My country. _I_ serve my country. That was the oath I took, same as you.” He leaned forward, spreading his hands. “I want you to serve our country too.”

John stared. For an instant, something flashed in Sholto’s open hand: a five-pointed white rose. John’s eyes went to Sholto’s face and Sholto’s gaze flicked to the ceiling, almost too fast to catch, and then back to John’s face. A camera, John realized.

Sholto sat back, folding his hands. “Yes, I lost my commission for being a gender traitor and for joining the uprising, just as you did. But I thought better of throwing away the rest of my life in a prison camp. If you recant, the Guardians will take you as well. You’ll get your rank back, go home to England. You’ve family there, haven’t you?”

John swallowed, trying to follow what Sholto was saying as well as what he wasn’t. Sholto hadn’t sold out; he was with the Jacobites, somehow, and he wanted John to join him as well. Could he do it? Live a double life, maybe do something to change things instead of living his life in futile but honest resistance?

_There’s always a way to help people._

“We need you,” Sholto said softly. “Back in England. We need alphas like you, John.”

John knew what he was going to say, but he had to make it look good for the eyes in the ceiling. He leaned back and folded his arms. “My full rank back, you say?”


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock sat in the parlor room with his head bowed over his hoop, diligently practicing feather stitching. He was bored. Everything he learned he considered in light of its potential usefulness to the map he was making, and feather stitching did not seem to have much to offer. What he really needed was something that would make the map look like a highly decorated tablecloth and not a map, but he had yet to think of anything that would not render it fairly useless as, well, a map.

On the other hand, feather stitching did not exactly take much concentration, and with his hood angled down over his work no one noticed he was listening to the whispering of the others.

“That’s the problem with the ones who were married to betas before. They think they’re entitled any time they want it.”

“Oh, poor you,” another woman breathed. “Are you going to report him?”

A sharp bitter sound, more of a scoff than a laugh. “Miranda reported hers. Know what happened to her? Sent back to Sarah House with a reputation as a troublemaker and _he_ got a new handmaiden.”

“Alphas can’t be held responsible for their needs.” Sister Anna did not bother to whisper, her grating, critical voice barely lowered. “It is for you to set an example by prayer and modesty.”

“Yeah, that’s working quite well for _her_ ,” someone muttered and there was a muffled burst of giggles.

“All right,” Lady Smallwood’s voice came, cutting crisply through the low whispers. “I believe you’ve all got the hang of that one now; let’s move on to the French knot. Watch me…”

Sherlock looked up to see how the knot was made. This could be useful: he could see at once that the French knot would come in handy for marking towns and cities. It took him a few tries to get the hang of it—he just had dangling loops of thread the first time—but then he had it, and began trying to vary the size.

“The French knot is good not just for pattern but for texture; it can add dimension to a design,” Lady Smallwood was saying. “I’m going to bring around a few examples for you to look at, and then I’d like everyone to try one on your own, combining some of our other stitches with the French knot.” She moved through the room, stopping occasionally to hand over samples of stitching and offer advice or praise, until she reached Sherlock’s seat. “Dimension can add depth to what you’re creating; it’s tactile as well as visual. You’ve probably heard of famous embroiderers in the past who were blind? A well-done bit of needlework can be appreciated by the fingers as well as the eye.” She handed Sherlock a piece of linen and moved on, answering a question from Sister Anna.

Sherlock looked at the embroidery he’d been given. It showed an apple orchard, neat rows of satin-stitched trees dotted with red French knots to represent apples. The apples seemed oddly geometric, not scattered over the trees but in tight clusters, often with one directly over another. The pattern of knots stirred something deep in his memory and he touched one of the trees with his finger, thinking of Lady Smallwood saying he should be able to appreciate it with touch. _Braille._ The apples weren’t randomly placed at all; they were a message.

Sherlock closed his eyes automatically, reaching to brush his fingers over the trees. He had learnt Braille long ago as a child, in the brief glorious period that he was old enough for Mycroft to play with him before Mycroft went away to school. _A spy should be able to read messages in the dark_ , Mycroft had said, _or in silence;_ they’d taught themselves sign language too. For an instant he thought he’d been wrong, the letters just a blur of nonsense, but then they sorted themselves into words: _buy a raspberry tart._

Sherlock went very still. A _puzzle._ His mind felt as his body might if he’d just emerged from a very tight space in which he’d been confined for an untold length of time: every mental joint and muscle stiff and creaking but oh, the joy at being able to stretch at last.

Sherlock glanced up under his hood. Lady Smallwood had her back to him, guiding Sister Julian of Norwich’s hand in making the French knot, seemingly oblivious. But the message had clearly come from her—the needlework, the hint—but why? What did it mean? Had Lady Smallwood had been behind the other message, the tiny parcels under the altar rail in the chapel: why had she waited this long to contact him again? And why a raspberry tart?

He needed more data. And at the moment, he had barely a quarter of an hour left before the class ended, barely enough time to close his eyes and summon the pattern of the Braille dots he needed, make the knots, turn them into bunches of flowers with lazy daisy stitches. Sherlock picked up his needle. Not enough time for anything longer, three letters: _yes._

“I need to go to the bakery,” Sherlock said when Molly finally emerged from the kitchens, not bothering to wait as he strode off toward the gate.

“But we’ll be late! It’s already gone four…”

“Then we’ll hurry.” And as she opened her mouth again: “It doesn’t matter we don’t have passes, they never look at ours anymore anyway.”

Sure enough, as they approached the gate Sherlock rummaged around in his workbag as though hunting for a pass and the guards, recognizing them, simply waved them through.

“Why?” Molly asked, panting as she struggled to keep up with his longer stride.

“Mrs. Turner was talking this morning about how tired of custards she is…I thought if I brought her a treat she might let me go walking now that it’s got a bit warmer.”

“Couldn’t you have waited until tomorrow? It’s not as though she’d…”

Sherlock tuned her out. They were almost at the bakery in any case. He was a bit surprised, when they went in, to see the tearoom was still quite full, though the display case was rather picked over. The rationing had eased slightly in the past week, but there were still only a few things left.

Sherlock made a show of looking over the offerings as the hard man watched him impassively before straightening. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything else in the back? I quite fancy a raspberry tart.”

The hard man turned without a word and disappeared. Sherlock waited, trying not to fidget; the man surely was in on it somehow, whatever it was, but he was not acknowledging Sherlock by the slightest flicker of an eyelash. The man came back and handed over a white string-tied box. “Wouldn’t eat too much of that,” the man said. “Bit rich for omegas.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said, taking it. The box felt like a raspberry tart. As soon as they’d got outside he pulled up a corner and peered inside: a raspberry tart.

“Mmmm, that looks good,” Molly said a bit enviously, looking over his shoulder.

“Best be off,” Sherlock said, giving it a quick sniff before tucking the box back together. Whatever he’d been expecting—a suit of beta clothes and a bottle of suppressants, ideally, with directions to a getaway car as well—an actual raspberry tart had been low on the list. Maybe the tart wasn’t meant for his benefit at all? Maybe someone was trying to take out the Commander and using Sherlock as a pawn? Sherlock had no objection to this in principle…unless the someone was Commander Moriarty, who was trying to get his hands on Sherlock after all…but Moriarty already had an ancillus; that didn’t make sense.

Sherlock chewed over this issue all the way back. He was so distracted he almost carried the tart off to his room, but remembered when Phillips asked, “Shall I take that to Mrs. Turner for you, Brother Bathsheba?”

“No, thank you, Phillips,” Sherlock said. He took the box down to the kitchens and presented it to a startled Mrs. Turner, saying, “I know how difficult things have been lately with the tighter rationing.”

“Oh, doesn’t that look lovely,” Cook said, beaming down at the tart in approval.

“It does,” Mrs. Turner said rather slowly. “Thank you, Brother Bathsheba. Perhaps…tomorrow, if it’s fine, perhaps I might be able to spare the time for a bit of a walk.”

Sherlock thanked her and escaped up to his room. A few weeks ago this prospect would have delighted him, but now he was too busy thinking. The man at the bakery had warned him off the tart; there must be something about it: poisoned? Sherlock had detected only raspberries and a faint scent of almonds, probably in the crust. Cyanide was meant to smell of almonds, but surely that was bitter almonds—Sherlock had never actually sniffed cyanide—and this had smelled quite sweet. Still. Sherlock was never given pudding: ancillae were meant to eat only the healthiest of foods, to increase their chances of conception, so presumably whoever had planned this had known he wouldn’t be called upon to eat the tart himself. But others would. Mrs. Turner and Cook at least, maybe even the other servants if Mrs. Turner were feeling generous. Surely they weren’t planning to kill off Commander Pitts’ entire household, would they? What exactly would that accomplish?

Well, whatever was in the wind, better if attention were diverted away from the tart and Sherlock’s role in bringing it. Sherlock pressed his fingertips together under his chin, stared out the window, and started to plan.

Sherlock are only a few bites of his dinner. He drank a fair amount of water from the bathroom tap, then stuck his fingers down his throat and made himself vomit a few times, leaving the room smelling unpleasantly of sick. Then he went to bed.

When the maid came to collect his tray—it was Effie this time, the stolid, boring one—she said, “Oh, are you ill?”

Sherlock had a flannel over his eyes, so she couldn’t see him roll them. “Just a bit under the weather,” he croaked weakly.

“I’ll fetch Mrs. Turner,” the girl said, and trudged off.

Mrs. Turner climbed the stairs in a brisk cloud of irritation, as though Sherlock had fallen ill just to inconvenience her. “You don’t look too badly off,” she said finally, having looked him over and directed Effie to open a window a bit. “We’ll leave a glass of water here and Effie can bring you a basin. Ring if you need anything and we’ll have the doctor round in the morning if you aren’t better.”

No one seemed to have been poisoned. Had he missed something? Sherlock lay in his smelly room, wondering, until he finally fell asleep.

When he woke in the morning Sherlock could tell at once that the usual rhythm of the house was off. There were definitely footsteps though—he wasn’t the only one alive in the place—so after considering a moment he decided to stick with only his quieter exercises that morning, not knowing who might be close enough to hear him. When he heard heavy footsteps on the stair he was just in time to dive back into bed, hoping his flush would be taken for fever.

Tilly opened the door and said, “Doctor here to see you.”

The doctor checked Sherlock over thoroughly. Sherlock looked him over in turn, although much less openly: beta of course, but born upper class, undoubtedly to secondary parents. This wasn’t uncommon; female omegas often had beta offspring. The doctor’s pedigree and the money that likely came with it placed him in a sort of grey zone of beta aristocracy, or what had once been considered the middle class.

“Bed rest, plenty of fluids,” the doctor finally decreed. “We’ll have a nurse in to stay with him.”

The nurse arrived in an hour and Sherlock was held captive in his bed for the next two days. He tried to insist he felt fine by the second day, but the doctor said he must recover his strength. Even reading was forbidden! Finally, on the third day, Sherlock was allowed up in his chair, and the doctor dismissed the nurse and told him he might resume his usual activities on the morrow.

Sherlock knew better than to resume all his usual activities; slipping down to the Commander’s study in the dead of night would be an exceedingly bad idea if the Commander himself had a nurse keeping vigil. Still, at least he could read again. He’d finished the contraband history book and started on _A History of St. George’s and the Veilgarden District_ , which turned out to be more interesting than he had supposed.

Tilly brought him a real meal that night, to his great relief. “Cook on the mend then?” He’d heard she had been taken ill, along with the Commander, Nicholls, and Mrs. Turner.

“Finally! And Effie’s back too, though she’s dragging her feet even more than usual. It was just me and Meg having to carry the whole household for a bit, with the guards who weren’t taken ill. Much good that lot was. Mrs. Turner’s still in hospital though.”

Sherlock wondered how much of the tart Mrs. Turner had eaten. “Must be her age.”

Tilly snorted. “Mean old prune. Commander’s back at work; he was a great baby whilst he was ill though. You want your tray at eleven tomorrow like usual or are you staying in?”

“Eleven, please.”

So the Commander was back at work. Had something important needed to happen in his absence? Would Sherlock ever even know? One thing was certain, he was not going to just carry on taking orders without getting information in return.

Molly was delighted to see him. “We heard your whole household was taken ill! I had to walk with Sister Grainne and she said half the servants died, but I didn’t believe that. We’re not that far back in the dark ages yet.”

“Not quite,” Sherlock said.

“Did you hear the bells? Sister Eglantyne had her babies. Bit early, but there were four of them. Visiting’s next week, shall we go? She’ll be unbearable but it would be good fun to get out a bit.”

Multiple gestations were the norm for omegas, although uncommon in the last few generations, when heat modulators had been employed to limit the number of babies. A litter of four was still impressive, and would raise Eglantyne’s status. “She thinks her Commander will petition to bond with her now she’s given him quads, but she’s mistaken,” Sherlock said bluntly. “He’s the young cocky type, doesn’t want to settle down. She’ll be back at Sarah House when her three months are up.”

“Oh.” Sherlock could almost hear Molly chewing her lip. “Well, I suppose she can be as unbearable as she likes then. Poor thing.”

“She’s already unbearable,” Sherlock said dismissively.

In the soaring sanctuary, during the service, Sherlock looked for Lady Smallwood. He could just glimpse her near the front, pale upswept hair under a navy hat almost severe in its plainness. “O God, make speed to save us,” the vicar intoned, and Sherlock dropped his head again to shield his face as his deep voice lifted with the others: “O Lord, make haste to help us.”

Lady Smallwood never looked back.

When Sherlock came in the front door Phillips—still looking a bit green; perhaps he had actually died of the tart and was now a ghost, still butlering away but beginning to molder—made a little throat clearing noise and said, “The new housekeeper would like a word, Brother Bathsheba.”

Sherlock stopped and turned. “What happened to Mrs. Turner?”

“We were told her health was rather more precarious than had been previously known. She will not be able to resume her duties.”

Sherlock considered this from every angle on the way down to the servants’ hall. Had the whole point of this operation been merely to replace the housekeeper? Why? Was the new one a spy of some sort?

Mrs. Hudson certainly did not look like a spy. She was tiny and older than he had expected, with a mischievous twinkle in her faded eyes; she’d once lived on the wrong side of the law, but everything else he could deduce was all innocuous enough. “So you’re the ancillus! Lovely. Looks like we might need to fatten you up a bit, won’t we? Now, I’m told you’ve been spending your days doing embroidery.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Passes the time.”

“That’s all very well, but I don’t hold with omegas moping about indoors all day. It’s not healthy. Why we haven’t yet had a happy announcement, I shouldn’t wonder! You’ll be taking your constitutional every afternoon rain or shine now I’m in charge.”

Sherlock dipped his hood to hide his smile. “As you say, Mrs. Hudson.”

Mrs. Hudson patted his arm. “We’ll get some roses in those cheeks and _then_ we’ll see a blessed event, you mark my words.”

Sherlock felt the smile curdle on his face.

As Sherlock had suspected, Mrs. Hudson was a great improvement over Mrs. Turner. He greatly enjoyed his afternoon walks, both for the exercise and for the chance to observe other members of London society. Sometimes Mrs. Hudson accompanied him herself, though more often—if it was damp, or her hip giving her trouble-- it was one of the maids. Many of the other ancillae were accompanied by their guard captains, but fortunately Mrs. Hudson never suggested that. At least two of the handmaidens, Sherlock realized after a few days, were actually carrying on illicit affairs with their guard captains, and one was carrying on with the maid. Two maids, three guard captains, and one ancilla were informing for the secret police. It was all very informative.

Molly was at the park most days. If they were both with their maids they could walk together with the maids trailing behind; it was like being back in the convent gardens when they were novices. But more often Molly was accompanied by Commander Adler’s guard captain, a watchful alpha woman called Kate, and occasionally by Commander Adler herself. This was unusual. Bonded couples often strolled at the other end of the park, but Commanders rarely spent time with their ancillae.

Sherlock happened to be with Mrs. Hudson the first time he encountered them.

“Oh hello,” Molly said happily, stopping as they drew level on the pass. “Commander, may I present my companion, Brother Bathsheba?”

Sherlock had lowered his head, of course, but he could hear Commander Adler’s voice perfectly. It was just as he remembered: musical for an alpha, almost a purr. “Of course, I remember from the presentation. I like the new name, Bathsheba. It suits you.”

“Commander,” Sherlock said neutrally.

Sherlock was not meant to present Mrs. Hudson, of course—she was a beta and a servant—but Molly had never cared about that sort of thing. “You must be Mrs. Hudson,” she said, lifting her head to smile at Mrs. Hudson from under her headdress. “Sh—Brother Bathsheba’s told me so much about you, he’s quite happy you’ve come.”

Mrs. Hudson gave her a clipped nod. “Sister,” she said. Her tone was polite, but with a chill in it Sherlock had only previously heard directed at Nicholls. “Enjoy your walk. Sheba, dear, we must be going.”

Sherlock was surprised—they’d only just arrived—but he was not about to say anything in front of Commander Adler. He followed her out the iron gates and along the street, trying to remember to slow his gait to match hers. “Problem?”

Mrs. Hudson shook her head, refusing to answer. Sherlock wished he could see her better, but with the great hood on he had to look straight ahead or risk colliding with someone. It was only when they’d returned to the house that Mrs. Hudson leaned toward him suddenly and whispered, “Don’t trust that one.”

And then she was gone, leaving him staring after her as her heels tapped off down the stairs.

Mrs. Hudson was also happy to give Sherlock a pass any time he asked for one, which was how he ended up letting Molly talk him into going to see Sister Eglantyne’s babies. A social engagement centering around infants and attended only by the same people he saw every single day sounded unspeakably boring, but it was still an improvement over sitting in his room.

After about half an hour Sherlock was reconsidering his decision. Sherlock had no interest in children—he’d never wanted any, even before his changed circumstances made the very idea a horror—and even less in Eglantyne, a bossy bore who’d joined the Order voluntarily; she was one of those deluded idiots who thought she was signing on for an arranged marriage with a brooding but tenderhearted alpha, not a life of serial concubinage. Sherlock didn’t like babies and he didn’t like Eglantyne, but what he really couldn’t bear was the way Eglantyne was looking at the babies: a helpless, almost desperate adoration.

A clutch of nannies and maids arrived to whisk the infants away and replace them with tea things, and Sherlock took advantage of Eglantyne’s momentary abandonment to slip in next to her. “You should get out,” he said to her in a low voice. “Soon. It’s the best chance you’ll get.”

He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the affront in her voice. “I beg your pardon?”

“ _Run._ As soon as you can. You’ll never be this unsupervised again and the postpartum pheromones block your omega scent. Steal one of the maid’s clothes and you can pass for a beta. You can get out of the country, if you can steal some gold and find someone you can trust.” Maybe. It was still a long shot, but she’d never get a better one.

“Why on earth would I want to run away?’ My Commander’s promised me, he’s going to—“

“He’s not,” Sherlock hissed. “He lied to you to keep you happy, he’s always been lying to you. He’d never settle for someone like you; he’s ambitious and believes he’s good-looking and he has tawdry taste. He’s been visiting the brothels every Saturday night; that’s obvious at Sunday services. He could get at least a Two now that he’s got quads by you but he won’t, just watch, he’ll take a Three with less breeding if she’s young and pretty and has big tits, and he’ll keep getting them younger and younger until finally he marries one and the only way you’ll see your children is from the back of the church, with the other handmaidens, on your fourth or fifth covenant looking at your children up front with their _father.”_

She took a breath and he thought she meant to hiss venom back at him, but she didn’t. She just breathed, jagged and irregular, somewhere between panic and despair.

When she finally spoke her voice was empty of everything but bleakness. “I can’t leave,” she said flatly. “They’re my children.”

After that Sherlock’s low level of unease that nothing had yet appeared under the altar rail increased until it was a constant low burn of panic. It had been nearly three months; his heat could come any day now, _where was it?_ If Lady Smallwood had been behind the mysterious gifts as well as Mrs. Turner’s replacement, was he meant to receive them directly from Mrs. Hudson now? Or was he wrong about everything? There had been no further messages in the embroidery.

On Ash Wednesday Sherlock knelt in the chapel, already feeling a sharp twist of anxiety and disappointment, and ran his fingers under the polished wood of the rail. He was so sure nothing would be there that he almost didn’t register the little bump of plastic fixed to the wood. Holding his breath almost without realizing it, Sherlock pried it loose and pulled it out to see; _yes._ A single pill in a tiny blister pack.

Sherlock let out his breath, feeling light headed with relief. He pushed his finger into the deep hem of his sleeve, widening the gap between the stiches, and slipped the pill into the hem. It would be safe there, he knew it, but he also knew he wouldn’t fully relax until he had it safely stowed away.

Back in his room Sherlock went straight to the loose panel in the wainscoting, knowing a maid would be up any minute with his lunch tray but desperate to get his precious package hidden. The secret compartment was a good bit more crowded now; his contraband books and tablecloth road map, almost halfway finished, took up most of the space. Pushed to one side were the two remaining sovereigns, and a small bag holding twenty-eight and a half sedative tablets.

Sherlock had bought the sedatives from Wiggins, in the first weeks of his new life, before Wiggins too had disappeared. Keeping the economy cashless had been very effective at squashing the black market—at least a black market lacking the unofficial blessing of the elite—but gold still had value, and Wiggins had been happy to hand over the bag in exchange for one of the sovereigns. Sherlock should have had a heap of silver in change, but he dared not risk trying to carry it back.

“Can’t you get suppressants?” Sherlock had whispered.

Wiggins shook his head, pale rheumy eyes constantly moving over Sherlock’s shoulder. “Nothing like that. Omega’s little helper, that’s all.”

Sherlock had taken one of the tablets to get through his first heat at the Commander’s. The next time he’d taken half, and this time he would take none at all. It wasn’t as though he wouldn’t have preferred to be as numb as possible, but he needed to save the rest; they were his backup, his plan B. In the event that the morning-after pill—or his uncertain benefactor—failed him, Sherlock would not be bringing children into this world. He touched the two remaining gold coins, thinking of the one he’d traded. A coin for the ferryman, paid in advance.

Two days later, Sherlock woke to feel the first burning prickles of electricity along his spine.


	5. Chapter 5

_Sarah House_

_Then_

At the convent, they were taken off suppressants as soon as they arrived. They stayed in the novitiate until their first heat came, and then they disappeared. No one knew what happened during heat. Even Sherlock and Molly never speculated, before Molly vanished as well.

The rumour was that those who had undergone a heat joined the red-robed ranks of the order proper, but this was hard to verify, as the novitiate was kept almost entirely separate. After Molly had gone Sherlock kept watch as best he could: from the windows when the order took their exercise, passing on the way to and from chapel. They all looked alike in their long robes and stiff head coverings, but once one of the small figures looked up, and he thought he saw Molly’s despairing brown eyes looking back at him from under the stiff wings of her headdress.

Sherlock had been at the convent nearly three months and was beginning to hope that it would never happen—suppressants were supposed to be completely reversible, but maybe Mycroft had managed to slip him something permanent; maybe he was some sort of anomaly; maybe for him at least it was all a mistake and he’d be sent off to live out his life as a beta. There were much worse things.

He was wrong, of course.

Like most omegas of his generation Sherlock had not suffered a heat since his presentation, and had almost as little idea of what to expect now as he had then. Thank God the first time had been over the summer holidays and not at school and, even luckier, his father had been home and realized what was happening as soon as he found Sherlock holding the hosepipe over his head in an effort to cool himself off. His father made the two hour drive to the hospital in London in less than ninety minutes: Sherlock didn’t even have time to get properly desperate before a kind-voiced nurse was sliding a drip into his arm and soothing, “Now you’re going to feel a bit sleepy, and when you wake up you’ll feel much better.”

Mummy and Mycroft weren’t allowed in the omega ward, of course, but Father stayed with him the whole time. It was all a slurry memory, foggy wanting and burning thirst, hazy from the drugs they’d given him. Once he’d recovered, he and Father and Mummy sat in the office with the omega doctor as she explained how the suppressants worked, how the implant would be replaced every five years or taken out if he wanted to have children, how it was indistinguishable from an alpha’s implant, how being an omega would have no effect on his life at all.

“You’re lucky,” Father said, smiling at him. “When I presented we didn’t have implants. I had to take a pill every day.”

“You’re showing your age. I had an implant from the beginning,” Mummy said.

“The technology for response modulators has been around longer,” the doctor explained. “It was originally developed for the military—well, you can imagine why.”

The doctor had been right—the tiny rod under the skin of his upper arm had looked exactly the same as Mycroft’s, though now it was long gone, of course. Soldiers in the field still had rut blockers, and low ranking alphas still took modulators on a day-to-day basis, but omegas no longer had any protection at all.

When the first itchy prickling started at the base of his spine, Sherlock was every bit as clueless as he had been fourteen years earlier. He shifted irritably in his seat as the Mother Superior droned on about omegas’ sacred duty and their revered place in the Empire, wondering if something had gone amiss in the laundry. He felt hot and uncomfortable. When he finally stood, stretching his cramped muscles in relief, an odd shiver of pleasure of pleasure ran up his back and Sherlock thought with a jolt, _oh, fuck._

He darted to the toilets and locked himself in, pushing his cowl back with relief so exquisite he felt that sexual rush again. He was sweating and hard under his robes but still, this was manageable; no one had seemed to be looking at him, maybe they hadn’t noticed, hadn’t picked up the scent change. Sherlock wet his hands and ran his fingers through his hair to try to cool himself, splashing his face and neck. Maybe, if he kept iron control of himself, held himself still no matter how hot and twitchy he got, he could get by undetected.

It was a measure of how disordered Sherlock’s mind already was that this even seemed a viable possibility. Two abbesses were waiting when he stepped out of the toilet. Sherlock bolted, of course—not that he really thought he could get away, it was pure instinctive terror—but the guards caught him at the end of the corridor and the taller abbess gave him a brisk shock with her cattle prod. Sherlock cried out as he went down, the electricity burning along his over sensitized nerves, so then he was terrified _and_ shamed. The guards hauled him up and dragged him along the corridor away from the novitiate and down into an unfamiliar part of the convent, where he was deposited into a small padded room.

Sherlock immediately pulled himself to his feet. The room was empty, but that didn’t mean it would remain so; no one knew what happened during heat here. “What—how long—“ he managed, tongue still thick and awkward.

“You’ll be safe here,” the plumper abbess said. Her eyes were not as hard as some of the others and Sherlock had never seen her use her cattle prod. She showed him the mattress and covered pail and a row of water bottles ranged along the wall. “Just call out the window if you need more water, but you should have plenty.”

“What about food?”

“You won’t be wanting any food…but you will want to start drinking the water. Right away would be best.”

Sherlock ignored the water just to disobey her until she left, pulling the heavy door with its small barred window behind her. Sherlock immediately tried it, but it was locked, of course. He leaned against the wall for support, legs still shaky and stripped off his heavy white robe— _God,_ that was so much better—and then drank down the entire first bottle in one go.

By the time he had stripped all the way down to his vest and pants Sherlock was wet and throbbing, but the sense of panic had receded, and the crackling along his spine no longer had such a vicious edge to it. Clearly the water was spiked, laced with just enough low-grade tranquilizer to keep him from actually hurting himself. Fine, Sherlock thought, and gulped down another, the water cooling the burning only briefly.

The world became fuzzy. Sherlock could hear someone howling, but he had to stumble to the barred window in the door to be sure it was coming from farther down the corridor, and not from him. He was so hot. His underclothes were sticking to him now, and every brush of damp cloth across his nipples or cock or arse jolted him with a fresh surge of arousal. He stripped everything off, feeling a brief moment of relief at the cool air on his skin, and then tried to stretch out the tension in his back. He arched and arched, and finally found himself on his hands and knees with his legs spread and his back bowed so that his chest was pressed into the rough canvas of the padded floor and his arse high in the air. He felt a rush of shame but also relief—his spine was no longer sparking—and crawled forward until he reached the mattress, thinking he could perhaps rest on his side, but his hard cock dragged across the bed and he began rutting almost without being aware he was doing it, pressing his fingers into his wet throbbing hole until he orgasmed in a brief spasm that only made him desperate for more.

Everything seemed to blur together after that. He was aware of drinking frantically, desperate for relief from both the thirst and his own awareness, of the ache in his arms and legs from his constant frantic rutting and pumping. He heard his own hoarse voice, distantly. He tried to fuck himself with one of the empty water bottles and found that he could press it in in such a way as to mimic—he assumed—the pressure of a knot, which finally made him come hard enough that he actually blacked out for a brief, blissful stretch of time. When he woke, his arms were so rubbery from exhaustion that he could barely reach for a fresh bottle. Within minutes he was rocking again, driven by the desperate pulsing need between his legs: _more, more, more._

When Sherlock woke he thought for moment he was alone in a white bedroom, but after blinking for a few minutes he realized that he was in a sort of hospital ward, with curtains on either side of his bed. It seemed to be evening, judging by the light on the wall he could see. The curtains were not pulled fully, and by turning his head he could see the beds on either side of him: both empty. He could hear a low murmur of conversation from somewhere nearby though, and a few moments later a woman appeared between the curtains. “Ah, you’re awake. Care for a cuppa? If you drink that down all right we can take that drip out.”

Sherlock just nodded. His throat was sore, as though he’d been screaming, and every muscle ached.

The nurse brought his tea. She wore white, like the novices, but with a large red cross on the front, and a stiff white headdress like the professed sisters: an ancillary like the guards and abbesses, a beta, obviously. She was much older than Sherlock, with fair hair and kind but faded blue eyes. A middle class beta family, good loyal citizens, husband and son—no, sons—lost in the wars. The world had burnt though not embittered her, but she had been happy enough to shut herself away from it. She did not carry a cattle prod.

“Thank you,” Sherlock croaked when she’d removed the drip from his arm. Just the effort of drinking the tea had left him utterly drained.

The nurse smiled and fluffed up his pillow, helping Sherlock to lie back down. “Try to get a bit more rest, shall we? You’ll be right as rain before you know it.”

Sometime in the night there was a bit of fuss—some sort of commotion, loud enough to rouse but not entirely wake him, and he soon drifted off again when it quieted. When he woke again he saw that it was morning. Remembering the noise, he glanced to his left, assuming he would see only the curtain pulled all the way to the wall, but evidently the curtain had snagged on the small bedside table. Sherlock could see the woman in the bed, who was sitting up eating some sort of porridge out of a bowl on a tray. Her wrists were bandaged. The woman wore a loose white gown, like him, with her hair down around her shoulders. It seemed shocking—Sherlock could not remember the last time he had seen another person’s bare head—but that was not why he stared. The woman was a stranger, and the habit hanging from a peg beside the peg was not white but red. She was the first full order member Sherlock had encountered.

The woman seemed to sense him staring at her and glanced up, still eating. “Oh, you’re awake,” she said without much interest. “First heat?”

“You tried to kill yourself,” Sherlock said bluntly.

“Yep,” the woman said. She took another bite of porridge. “Didn’t make much of a job of it. That’s all right, I’ll do better next go.”

“Why?” Sherlock said urgently, pushing himself upright. “Why did you? What do they have planned for us?”

The woman glanced up in surprise. “What, don’t they tell you when you join up? All you eager little snowflakes over there?”

“I didn’t join up. I ran and I got caught. I was convicted of treason and sent here, just like you, except I was sent to the novitiate.”

“Yeah, you get to skip that step if you’ve already been bonded and bred,” the woman said. “How did you know?”

“Obvious, either you or your mate…oh, it was both, wasn’t it?”

“I was an MP. My husband worked for Amnesty International. We thought about running, but this is our bloody country. My family’s been in Lincolnshire a thousand years, probably. If everyone who could, left, who’s going to speak for those who can’t? That’s what we thought, anyway.”

“You got the kids out though,” Sherlock observed.

“Boarding school in Switzerland.” She was still eating, her tone unchanged; if Sherlock hadn’t been watching he wouldn’t have known tears were trickling down her cheeks. “Put most of the money in Switzerland too. They’ll be okay. We set up my best friend as guardian.”

“What happened to your husband?”

“Beheaded. They made me watch.”

Sherlock grimaced; losing a bondmate was said to be excruciating. “I’m sorry.”

“He was the lucky one.”

Sherlock leaned forward urgently, trying to keep his voice low; he didn’t know how long they had until the nurse came back. “What are they going to do to us?”

“Oh right, you don’t know.” She looked over at him for the first time and he saw a terrifying emptiness: something had broken behind her eyes, some basic tie--to civilization, to self-preservation—shattered. “They’re going to breed us, of course, surely you know that. But the numbers aren’t right, are they? What is it, twenty alphas to every omega? Fifty? Hard to bring back the good old days, when every alpha had his pick of bondmates and probably a beta or two on the side. Now it’s alphas that are a dime a dozen and omegas that are scarce. So for the new hierarchy, we’re the perk. We’re to be given out, like royal favors, to the top-ranking alphas—I’ll probably be given to one of my old rivals, just to rub my nose in it a bit more—and every three months we’re to close our eyes and think of England. And not just a few times either. No, the lucky alphas are allowed to bestow favors in turn, so they’re to invite members of their households: their underlings, their alpha sisters, their guard captains, their spoilt little bastard sons, all get to have a go. The Commander goes first, of course, so the children are considered his. Or hers. _We’ve_ certainly no claim on them, it’s on to the next lot once we’ve dropped a littler.” She smiled at him, a horrible death’s head smile. “You should have run faster, snowflake.”

Sherlock stared at her, still taking it in, and then they beard the sound of footsteps coming. Hard soled shoes: abbesses. The woman returned her gaze to her bowl, spooning up another bite.

“Sister Jane Seymour? Come along. The Reverend Mother wants to see you.”

“I’ll finish my breakfast first, if you please,” the woman said crisply, scraping the bottom of her bowl with the spoon.

“You’ll—“

A nurse came bustling up then, a different nurse, shorter and bossier; her rubber-soled shoes quiet on the stone floor. “Excuse me, miss, but there are ill people here who need their rest. I’ll thank you to wait outside until the Sister has finished, and then I’ll call you to unfasten these chains when she’s dressed.” She snapped the curtain closed with a brisk flick of her hand.

Sherlock eased himself back down, listening to the low murmur of voices and movement coming from the bed next to his. Chains. Sister Jane Seymour must be manacled to the bed, but he, Sherlock, was free. He closed his eyes and thought, _run faster._

Sherlock was told to stay in bed. “You’ll be a bit sore today,” the bossy nurse told him in her brisk Northern accent, bringing Sherlock his own tray of porridge and tea. “But by tomorrow we’ll have you up and up about, you’ll see.”

“A bit sore” was an understatement—Sherlock hurt in places he hadn’t known existed—so Sherlock devoutly hoped she was right about being better tomorrow. He ate everything he was offered, though Sister Jane Seymour’s story had left him sick and queasy, and did his best to rest. Twice the bossy nurse helped him up for the loo, which Sherlock used as opportunity to get the lay of the land: they were in an upper story, facing east, and judging by the glimpse he got of the large window at the end of the long room, were in the convent’s center wing. It sounded to him as though they were alone on the floor. Most significantly, he never heard the sound of hard shoes, which meant no guards or abbesses were posted at the infirmary.

There was one exception. Midafternoon he heard a bustling farther along the ward, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps outside. As the noise grew closer Sherlock slid down in the bed and closed his eyes partway, watching under his lashes as the procession passed the foot of his bed: an abbess leading two guards carrying the limp form of a woman, wrapped in a sheet, her long hair hanging down. Even from where he lay Sherlock caught the scent of her: sweat and something musky and feral, like the scent of sex.

A shiver went up Sherlock’s spine. He knew what that smell was, knew it on a visceral level, and he knew he must have smelt the same when he had been brought to the infirmary. He lay still, listening to the sounds as the bossy nurse directed the guards to lay the woman on a bed. The footsteps grew louder again and Sherlock closed his eyes hurriedly, but they didn’t so much as slow when they passed his bed. When they had gone Sherlock sat up again, straining to hear the sounds further along the ward: a soft swishing and splashing, the rustle of cloth. The nurse must be washing her, just as Sherlock must have been washed. He didn’t remember.

Sherlock had not really made a conscious decision to run. It felt more as though there were no decision to make. He had known as soon as he knew the truth that he would escape or he would die, because the alternative was unthinkable.

After the ward fell quiet again Sherlock managed to fall into an uneasy doze. When he woke the lamps were lit, the fading light of twilight dim on the wall. He stirred and sat up, reaching for the glass of water on the bedside table, and the kind blue-eyed nurse appeared. “Ah, there you are! Are you hungry?”

Sherlock nodded and listened hard as her footsteps receded, then to the sound of her soft voice; a one sided conversation, she must have called down for his dinner. The sound more muffled than the short distance her footsteps had traveled, so there must be an office of some sort. A desk. _Keys._

Sherlock sat motionless in the bed, listening with every particle of his being, until he heard the sound of footsteps coming from the other direction. He hadn’t heard anyone climbing, which meant a long corridor, with the staircase at the end. He glimpsed a grey-clad figure—one of the kitchen staff, obviously—handing the tray off to the nurse, who then brought it to Sherlock. Stew and bread, the usual stuff of the convent meals.

“There we are,” the nurse said, smiling. “Enjoy that, and I’ll bring you some warm milk in a bit to help you sleep.”

Sherlock ate his dinner and tipped the milk covertly into the water glass on the adjoining table, just in case it was laced with something to _really_ help him sleep. The minutes dragged, and he had absolutely no way of judging how much time had passed; he couldn’t so much as hear a clock tick. The nurse came by and took his tray and escorted him to the loo and to clean his teeth, and then he was back in bed again. There was no sound from the curtained bed farther along the ward.

With the lights dimmed, Sherlock curled on his side and set the clock in his head for an hour. Fifteen minutes before it was up, the kind nurse came by and leaned over him; evidently checking that he was asleep, then adjusted the curtains around his bed and moved quietly away. Sherlock reset his clock, and waited.

When the hour was up Sherlock opened his eyes and felt, for an instant, oddly reluctant. Once he stood up he was committed, set on a path that might end with him dead, or…what? What could possibly worse than what Jane Seymour had described? Death would be infinitely preferable. Sherlock took a deep breath and stood up.

The office was easy to find: a warm spill of lamplight, a bit farther along the ward than the loo. Sherlock edged along the wall toward it and then flattened himself next to the doorway, listening hard. Nothing. A soft rustle, stopped. A sniff. A page turning. She was reading. Would she be facing the door, or away? The door, Sherlock thought; the desk would be facing out, so she could look up if there were any noise from the ward. Go in fast then.

It wasn’t much of a struggle. The nurse barely had time to look up, her eyes going wide and shocked, before Sherlock had her on the floor with his hand over her mouth. “Shhh, shh,” he whispered as quietly as he could into her ear. “I don’t want to hurt you, you’ve been nothing but kind to me. Please be quiet.”

The nurse gave a final, halfhearted heave—as though testing to be sure it was hopeless—and then went still, nodding against Sherlock’s palm. He removed it carefully, watching her narrowly for any sign of her drawing breath to shout, but the nurse stayed quiet. He bound her hands, found a roll of bandage and placed it carefully into her mouth (“I am sorry,”’ he said again, inadequately, when she looked at him reproachfully) and wrapped another bandage around her head to keep it in place. Then he started searching.

The keys were in the desk drawer, just as he had assumed, but they were small: no car keys, nothing that would help him get away, the type that opened— _oh._ He looked around: a supply room behind the office, and in the supply room, a locked cabinet. The sedatives were conveniently already drawn up to syringes, in neatly labeled boxes: _Women_ and _Men_ and _Extra strength/Large Men._ He took a handful of the last and one from the box marked _Women._

“I’m sorry,” he said again, kneeling beside the nurse, “but I can’t have you raising the alarm, and fortunately for you I have some experience with these…it can be given intravenously as well as intramuscularly, I suppose?”

When she was out Sherlock back moved into the supply room, intending to search behind the closed door on the other side of it for nurses’ robes he could wear, but when he opened the door he discovered the bossy nurse, fast asleep and snoring loudly. It was the nurses’ dormitory. Well, at least he hadn’t raised much noise. He retrieved another syringe, covered her mouth, and jabbed the syringe into her bicep. The nurse struggled briefly—it felt like a long time, but was probably less than a minute—and then went still. He bound and gagged her as well. No telling how long the sedative lasted.

He found the nurses’ robes back in the supply room, in a cupboard that also held loose infirmary gowns like the one he was wearing. Sherlock changed quickly, taking the starched white headdress from the kind nurse where she lay unconscious on the floor; he had no shoes and wouldn’t pass close inspection, but hopefully the red cross and the distinctive headdress would be enough to render him unnoticeable if he happened to pass an occupied doorway. He just needed to make it downstairs and find the guardroom. The nurse’s pinafore had large deep pockets like a carpenter’s, and Sherlock filled them with everything he thought might be useful: rolls of bandage, the loaded syringes. Then he turned out all the lights—might slow someone down a few minutes—and slipped out into the corridor.

The rest of the storey seemed to be deserted. Sherlock slipped along the wall, silently in his bare feet, and crept down the staircase at the end: one flight, two flights, three. He was on the ground floor. Had he ever been down here? Sherlock wasn’t sure; he did not even think he had ever been in the central wing of the building. He was completely disoriented. He moved slowly along the corridor, peering around the corner: there, up ahead, a square of light spilling out. The guard room? Where was the front door? The convent was organized around a central cloister; it would not do to bolt out a door and find himself in the courtyard. Sherlock retraced his steps and discovered himself in an entry hall, with what was evidently the front door: it was enormous. Sherlock tried the handle, which of course was locked, and slunk back the way he had come.

Back at the corner, Sherlock leaned out far enough to observe the light. It was coming not through an open door, as he had originally thought, but from a window in the door’s upper half; the infirmary had had one as well. This meant that with any luck Sherlock could creep close enough to see in without being noticed. He took off the white headdress and crossed the corridor, inching his way along the opposite wall until he could see a narrow slice of the illuminated room. A large back of monitors: he had found the guard headquarters and, better yet, the two men in black uniforms were facing the monitors, with their backs to the door.

Sherlock moved a few inches to his right to get a better view. He felt a momentary spike of panic when he saw that most of the monitors showed darkened corridors, but that was silly: clearly his escape from the infirmary hadn’t been noticed, so either there were no cameras in the centre wing or the guards were pants at their job. The rest of the monitors showed what looked like nothing, so probably outside. Sherlock systematically surveyed the rest of the room: a large map, a duty roster, nothing else. No door in the room and the guard on the left had a mug at his elbow, so if the guard wanted tea—or the loo—they’d have to leave the guardroom. Excellent, that would be his chance. Where was the loo?

Sherlock found the break room a bit farther along, on the same side of the corridor as the guardroom. It was a small room with a mismatched assortment of shabby furniture and a toilet through the back, with a table holding a kettle and mugs. Perfect. Sherlock swung the door all the way open to test its arc, then pushed it nearly but not quite closed; he needed to be able to hear the guard coming. Then, after some consideration, he turned on the overhead light. It was a bit of a risk, but the guard would probably assume someone had simply forgotten to switch it off, and he couldn’t take a chance of being blinded by the sudden illumination. Then he settled in to wait.

An hour passed. Sherlock heard the distant sound of the clock in the entrance hall striking one. He felt the anxiety rising: July, dawn would come early, and he needed to be well away by sunup, but the chances of one of the guards raising the alarm if he stormed the guardroom…he’d wait until two. He closed his eyes and summoned up the map from the guardroom, thinking hard.

Some minutes later, Sherlock heard the sound he’d been straining his ears for: a door creaking open.

“Fancy one as well?”

There was a response Sherlock couldn’t make out, then the first man’s cheerful voice again: “Right then, back in a tick.”

Sherlock straightened, tightening his grip on the syringe. He’d already thumbed the cap off. His heartbeat seemed louder than the footsteps coming down the hall.

The door swung open and a man stepped in, already turned toward the kettle, and Sherlock leaped like a panther. His momentum took them both down and Sherlock got his arm around the man’s neck, squeezing with all his strength as he jabbed the needle into the man’s upper arm. For a minute he thought he’d gone straight through—the man thrashed fiercely, trying to get his hand down toward the cattle prod, but Sherlock grabbed his wrist with his free hand and hung on grimly. The guard jerked his head sharply back, striking Sherlock’s nose hard enough to make his eyes water. Sherlock tightened his grip around the man’s neck and finally, _finally,_ the man began to slow, and at last went still.

Sherlock leaned over, got the helix of the man’s ear between his teeth, and bit. Mostly he wanted to be sure the guard wasn’t shamming, though revenge for his smarting nose might have been a factor as well. The man didn’t move so Sherlock got to his feet, nerves humming with adrenaline. So much for the easy part.

The man was far too short for his clothes to be useful so Sherlock just took his cattle prod and keys, leaving the man bound and gagged on the floor. Then his eyes fell on the tea table.

A few minutes later, Sherlock pushed the door to the guard room open, cattle prod in one hand and a full mug in the other. The guard at the monitor turned, smiling, already reaching for the tea as he said, “Thanks mate—“ and Sherlock dashed the hot water into his face.

The man screamed, temporarily blinded and hand going automatically to his eyes instead of his belt, and Sherlock hit him with the cattle prod. The man toppled from his chair, twitching, and Sherlock pulled out a syringe and jabbed it into his hip. The man made a sort of grunt, as though he’d been struck in the solar plexus, and went still.

Sherlock gagged him quickly, using the bandage in his pockets, and looked him over. The man was an inch or so shorter than Sherlock but wider; his clothes would be a bit short but wearable. Sherlock stripped him quickly—adding another set of keys, cattle prod, and a jackknife to his collection-- and changed clothes. The shoes were too tight, but they were better than going barefoot.

Dressed, Sherlock stood for a brief moment surveying the monitors. The cameras weren’t important unless they were recording, which he couldn’t tell; his problem was the guards, and the wall. Sherlock had seen the convent’s perimeter on his daily walks: a high old stone wall, topped with razor wire, with recently constructed guard towers at each corner. He needed to distract the guards and get past the wall.

Sherlock took a deep breath and picked up the radio, hoping no one would notice a different voice. “All units, attention. We have a report of movement along the southwest wall. South and West towers, do you see anything? Report.” Without waiting for a reply, he hit the power switch on the radio, then crossed to the panel he’d seen on the side wall began flipping switches there too: the cameras, the outside floodlights. With any luck the guards would focus their attention on the southwest wall, which was nearest to the road, making it the obvious place to stage a rescue attempt or escape. Then he bolted.

The short journey to the front door seemed to take forever. He heard no footsteps, no sound of alarm in the building yet—good—but finding the right key for the door took forever and he had to fight to squelch the rising panic in his chest. He relocked the door and turned, briefly disoriented before he recognized the east wing looming off to his right. The night was overcast and almost totally dark, but he could hear the sounds of distant shouting. Sherlock took a deep breath and ran.

He saw no one. At the northeast wall he hesitated—he could climb the old wall easily, even in the dark, but he would have to slice the wire with his knife to get over and then they’d know where he’d fled, but searching for a door would take precious minutes. Stupid, stupid, he should have gone to a different wall and then doubled around on the outside. Sherlock ran along the wall, crouching low, sure any minute the floodlights would come back on, and then _thank God thank God_ he saw a darker shadow against the stone. It was even harder finding this key in the dark but at last he managed it, through the door and locking it from the other side and tucking the keys in his pocket and then Sherlock put his head down and ran for all he was worth.

He’d worked out his plan in the break room, waiting, but he hadn’t taken into account the way the terror would chill and numb him, the frantic need to check behind him to see if he’d been spotted. He made for the woods, far ahead, for the better cover and because there might be a stream he could use to thrown any dogs off his scent. He could hear nothing but his own panting, the blood pounding in his ears, the dark mass of trees growing infinitesimally larger, larger, and then he was in.

Sherlock slowed to a walk, panting and winded; the trees were not thick but were too close together for running. He looked over his shoulder just as in the distance the floodlights at the convent came up again. Then he began to run anyway.

Through the woods, into a stream that turned out to be far deeper than he’d anticipated, so that he was soaked to the waist when he finally clambered out again. He left the keys in the water to lighten his load. Back out in to the countryside, open fields and uneven footing and he fell and rolled and made it back up again and kept running, running, because the only thing that mattered now was widening the radius: getting as much distance between himself and his pursuers as he could before the sun came up and drove him to ground.

Sherlock came to a hedgerow and slowed, aware suddenly of how exhausted he was. He’d done nothing more strenuous for months but stroll in the garden and the unaccustomed exertion, coming on top of his recent heat, was taking a toll. His feet, too, were killing him, the too-tight shoes sending knifelike stabs of pain through his toes at every step. Sherlock followed the hedgerow for a bit until he came to a large stone, where he sat down and took off his shoes. His socks were still wet, so he took those off and wrung them out as best he could; his toes and heels were blistered. Then he took the jackknife and cut the leather toes off the shoes.

Back on his feet. Sherlock had no idea where he was going; his initial plan had been to head east to the sea and hope to find a boat that would get him out of the country, but he had lost all sense of direction and didn’t even know how to find the north star had the night not been entirely dark. He was just trying to cover ground now. Sherlock trudged on, too weary to run, following the hedgerow until he came out onto a narrow gravel road. He considered, then crossed to the middle of the road—he’d hear an oncoming car for miles on this gravel, and any exhaust would help make his scent—and broke into a half hearted run again then for a half mile or so until his feet slowed of their own volition.

Tired. He was so tired, and so thirsty, and now the sky was beginning to show the faintest cold pallor on the horizon; he’d managed to head more or less northeast, it seemed. He needed to get off the road, narrow and deserted as it was, but there were only bare fields or pastures to either side.

Sherlock came to a crossroads with an old stone marker on it; he could barely read the words, which listed towns he’d never heard of. The closest was due east, so Sherlock struck out that way, following the road in hope of coming to some kind of shelter: a barn, preferably, or some kind of outbuilding, anyplace he could get under cover and rest.

But he saw nothing. Sherlock stumbled on, his fear growing with the light. The soles of his shoes had begun to peel away from the remaining uppers as the stitching unraveled, and the soles flapped against the ground with every painful step. He couldn’t go much farther.

Rounding a curve, he saw ahead a scattering of lights: a village, probably. Sherlock hesitated, but there was nothing around him but empty countryside; maybe he could find a garden shed or garage, and surely the village was too tiny to have a checkpoint. He kept going. The wall to his right became taller and better kept. After a bit he came to an opening and a small brass sign set in the wall reading “THE SHRUBBERY”.

Sherlock stopped and peered inside. The drive curved, and the tall shrubbery behind the wall blocked the house from view; worth a try? He crept inside and into the cover of the tall trees, moving carefully to avoid loose branches. He saw the glow of light before he even glimpsed the house, a handsome stone building with all its downstairs windows brightly lit. No good; the inhabitants were awake and too likely to spot him. Sherlock made his way back the way he came.

The light was getting brighter; it was fully dawn now. _Think._ Could he shelter in the trees? At least it was a bit of cover, but in full daylight he might still be spotted, and besides he was desperately thirsty. He came to another opening, this one with a sign reading “ROSE COTTAGE”. Below the sign, so old and faded it was barely recognizable, was a crude painting of a smiling cat.

Sherlock stared at the cat. It was a traveller’s sign, one he had memorized with Mycroft long ago: _a kind-hearted woman lives here._ It meant safety and shelter, or it had once, but the sign was so old the current owners might not even realize what it meant. At that very moment Sherlock heard the sound for which he’d been straining his ears for the past several hours: the crunch of tyres on gravel. Sherlock took one last desperate look, at the wall on his right and the open field to his left, and then he stepped inside.


	6. Chapter 6

Rose Cottage was lovely, but what most interested Sherlock was that its windows were completely dark. Evidently no one was yet awake inside. He could see only one other building, a small garage with its door wide open and a car parked inside. Sherlock was so desperate that for a moment he half considered crawling into the back of the car—petrol was rationed, after all, maybe the owners wouldn’t go anywhere?—but he dismissed the thought almost immediately. In the back of the house were gardens and beyond that he thought he glimpsed an orchard; surely there must be a shed somewhere. He crept forward, one eye on the house and the other looking out for anything that looked like a garden shed, so that he was almost on top of the doghouse when he saw it.

Sherlock froze. The dog was lying perfectly still, watching him with its head up and its ears perked alertly. He could see no sign of a chain. It hadn’t barked, which seemed miraculous if rather puzzling, but surely it would give chase if he ran. Sherlock backed up slowly, and the dog rose smoothly and followed him. It was some kind of a shepherd, with bright intelligent eyes and what Sherlock assumed were fierce teeth. Sherlock stopped again and the dog stopped too. I can do this all day, its expression said plainly.

Sherlock looked around. There was nothing for it: his only hope was the house. Carefully, keeping his eyes fixed on the dog the whole time, he inched his way to the back door and knocked in a quick flurry. If no one answered perhaps he could pick the lock and slip down to the cellar—

To his surprise, the door opened almost immediately.

“Hello,” the woman in the door said, smiling. “These are bad times to be travelling, wouldn’t you say?”

Sherlock stared. The woman was old, with a tumble of silver curls and cloudy eyes, but her spine was straight and she moved with the ease of someone half her age. She was an omega. She had the smile of a kind-hearted woman. She had painted a sign of safe haven on her wall, or someone had, and now she was waiting expectantly for him to give the ritual response to what was obviously a coded question.

“I--sorry,” Sherlock said. “I don’t—no one sent me, I escaped, and I saw your cat sign on the wall. I don’t know what I’m supposed to answer.”

“You saw my cat!” the woman said, delighted. “I wasn’t sure it was even still there. And you knew what it meant! Come in, now, straight away.”

“Teddy,” another voice said sharply. Sherlock, stepping inside the dark kitchen, heard the clatter of feet on the stairs and then another woman appeared, another omega, unbrushed salt-and-pepper hair and a half-pulled-on dressing gown. Her eyes went wide at the sight of Sherlock—no, not Sherlock, the black uniform. “What are you doing here? You will leave this house at once, if you please.”

“No—wait, it’s not mine,” Sherlock said quickly, raising his open hands. “I took it when I escaped, look, it doesn’t even fit—“

“Caro, he’s an omega,” Teddy said softly. “Only a few days out of heat, I think.”

Teddy had turned her head but was looking not at the other woman but only in the direction of the stairs. She was blind, Sherlock realized.

Caro frowned and looked at him more closely. He saw her register his battered feet, the wet and sagging trousers and then a strange, almost horrorstruck expression came into her eyes: she had seen the tag on his ear. “You said you escaped,” she said in a low, strained voice. “Escaped from where?”

“Caro,” Teddy said.

Caro blinked, seeming to come back to full awareness of the situation. “Right, of course. Let’s get you under cover and we’ll talk later. Come with me—we’ve a hidey-hole in the cellar.”

“If I could trouble you for a glass of water…”

“I’ll bring it,” Teddy said, already moving away.

Sherlock limped after Caro into the passage and down a narrow flight of stairs into the cellar. The room appeared, at first glance, completely unremarkable: shelves holding jars of jam and pickles, Christmas decorations, a few old pieces of furniture. Caro led him to the far wall where a wardrobe stood and took a torch down from a shelf. “Right—watch your head,” she said, pulling the door open and shining her torch inside.

Sherlock ducked inside and saw that the wardrobe had no back; it led directly into a tiny room, barely big enough to hold a cot and an old wooden box turned upside down to make a table. The table had a battery powered lantern, which Sherlock switched on as he sat on the cot. The room was too small for him to stand upright. He immediately began peeling off what remained of his socks and shoes.

“Oh, that doesn’t look good,” Caro said. “I’ll fetch a basin and some salve. Are you hungry?”

“Just thirsty.”

Teddy appeared, ducking in with the ease of long practice and handing him a glass of water. Sherlock drained it gratefully and Caro returned with a basin. Sherlock slid his feet in, hissing at the sting, then dried his feet on the towel Caro handed him and smeared salve over the worst of the raw places. “Thank you,” he mumbled, and then he lay down without even bothering to switch off the lantern and fell immediately into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

Sherlock woke in the dark, disoriented for only a split second before he remembered where he was. Strangely, his first thought was of the dog. Why hadn’t it barked at him?

Sherlock sat up, fumbling a bit before he found the lantern and turned it on. The room was as he remembered: low ceiling, camp bed, table now holding a full glass of water. Opposite the box on the other side of the opening was a covered pail. Sherlock lifted the lid and peered inside: kitty litter. Clever. The wardrobe door had been closed, and an assortment of old winter coats now hung to block the hidey hole from casual view.

Sherlock drank some water and availed himself of the litter. His clothing had dried but smelled terrible, rank with sweat and river water, so he stripped down to his underthings and wrapped himself in a blanket. Then he sat down to think.

After a while he heard the muffled sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and switched the lantern off quickly, holding his breath in the dark until he heard a soft tapping at the wardrobe door. “Hello?”

“Come in.”

The door swung outward and a hand pushed the coats aside; Sherlock turned the light back on and saw Teddy, smiling at him. “Were you awake? I would have called your name, but I realized I didn’t know it.”

“Bro—“ Sherlock began and then cut himself off, gritting his teeth. “Sorry. I was given a new name, and they didn’t take kindly to our not using them. My name is Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sherlock. How lovely. And you know mine, of course.”

“Not entirely. Ursula or Theodora?”

“Sorry?”

“Teddy—is it a nickname for Ursula, or short for Theodora?”

Teddy laughed. “Neither, I’m afraid. My real name is Theodosia. A pretty name for a pretty little wife, which was the last thing I wanted to be.”

Sherlock smiled. “And yet you are. How long have you been together?”

“Me and Caro? Oh, since we were quite young. We were at boarding school together, isn’t that nauseating?”

“But how are you still here? What about the registry, the property laws—and how are you still together?”

“We’re old,” Teddy said simply. “When you get past childbearing age, people stop seeing you, really. And we’ve long memories. When Caro and I were young, two omegas couldn’t be together then either, not openly, so we’ve not forgotten how to hide. Gender treason, that’s what they call it now, isn’t that absurd?”

“But you’re risking everything, hiding me,” Sherlock said. “I didn’t even know the password.”

“Wasn’t it lucky you saw the cat! This was our summer cottage when I was a girl. My grandmother painted that cat when my mother was young, to let the Gypsies know they could camp in the orchard. My mother used to tell me about watching them out her window. The dancing by the firelight! And music! I painted the cat over again when I was a child in hopes that the Gypsies would come back, but of course they were all gone by then.”

“You trained the dog not to bark at me, didn’t you?”

“I did. She won’t make a peep if she smells an omega, in case it’s someone come to hide,” Teddy said. “We couldn’t have her barking in the night, making the neighbors think we’d been burgled. But if she smells an alpha or a beta on their own, oh, such a ruckus. She’s a clever girl, Cleo. That’s why I’ve come down, you see: it’s time for her walk, and the neighbors might worry if they don’t see us out. I didn’t want to you to wake and find yourself all alone.”

“Where’s Caro?”

“Gone to buy you some clothes—she had to go to a larger town, everyone here knows she’s no need of men’s clothing.” Teddy turned, reaching behind her, and returned with a plate of sandwiches perched atop a stack of books. “I’ve brought you a bit of lunch and something to read. I do hope it’s not the phone book, picking books obviously isn’t my strong suit.”

“At this point I’d gladly read the phone book,” Sherlock said, taking the stack. “Thank you. I’m sure you’ve questions, but I suppose…”

Teddy nodded. “We’ll talk this evening, all together. It should be safe to come up then, and it will be much more comfortable than here. You’re all right for a bit? You can keep the light on, though best to put it out if you hear noises until you know who it is.”

Sherlock assured her he would be fine and Teddy left, rearranging the coats and closing the door carefully behind her. Normally Sherlock hated feeling confined but he felt oddly happy in the tiny room: safe and secret, in possession once more of his own body, his own name. It would grow claustrophobic soon enough, but for the time being he felt perfectly content to stay hidden in the cellar with his sandwiches and books.

Caro appeared a few hours later. She seemed startled to find him wearing only a blanket, and kept her gaze averted as she led him upstairs to a small tidy bathroom whilst Teddy and Cleo kept guard outside. Sherlock hadn’t had a real shower since his heat and the hot water seemed blissful, soothing his aching muscles and sluicing away the last of the reek that had clung to him since his flight. Caro had brought him carefully neutral clothing: trousers and a navy jumper, with a tweed jacket. He could pass for a Bonded in country clothing or a beta at a distance.

Dressed, Sherlock wiped a spot clear in the steamy bathroom mirror and carefully finger-combed his hair forward so that his curls covered the tag. The lack of product on a damp summer evening would render his hair thick and frizzy, which could only help. Caro had brought him a razor as well and when he was fully finished he stared at his reflection for a long time; the convent had no mirrors, and it seemed years since he had seen himself. His face seemed thin and haunted. Turning, he caught a flash of red through his hair and felt a sudden stab of vicious hatred, so strong he only barely stopped himself from ripping the tag right through his ear.

When he came out on to the landing Teddy was waiting for him, smiling her warm smile: “Ah, you smell much better!”

“A definite improvement,” Sherlock agreed.

“Two of our friends are here. You can trust them, and we’ve assured them that they can trust you, but it’s first names only, you understand.”

The friends turned out to be an alpha named Patrick, older even than Teddy and Caro with bright twinkling eyes—former headmaster at a boys’ school, Sherlock noted automatically--and a beta woman named Beth. Beth was a few years younger than Sherlock, clearly uncomfortable in a long skirt, her gold hair in a thick no-nonsense braid. Some sort of farmer. Sherlock, feeling like a zoo specimen as their eyes kept returning to the tag on his ear, only narrowly refrained from spitting out every unflattering thing he had deduced about them before they even sat down to eat. He needed these people if he was to get out of the country; he had everything to gain from their meeting, but they had everything to lose.

“Right then,” Patrick said. “First things first. How did you know to come to this house?”

“I didn’t,” Sherlock said. “I saw the cat sign and I took a chance. I’d been on the run all night, the sun was coming up, and I heard a car coming on the road. You know what the countryside is around here; there’s no place to hide.”

“How did you know what the cat meant?”

“Read it in a book as a child,” Sherlock said. “I can tell you the other signs too if you like.”

Patrick studied him. “You said you’d been on the run. On the run from what?”

“Probably best to start from the beginning,” Sherlock said, pushing his plate away. “My name is Sherlock Holmes. Five months ago I tried to leave the country, but I’d left it rather late, and only made it as far as Ireland before the borders closed. I was apprehended and returned to England to stand trial for treason. The trial lasted, oh…” he looked at the ceiling as though trying to remember. “Five minutes? At most. I wasn’t allowed to speak. I was convicted, of course, which meant a death sentence, but as an unbonded omega with no living family I was under the special protection of the Crown. Due to my particular value to the Empire and his Majesty’s clemency, I was instead remanded to the custody of the Royal Order of Ancillae.”

Patrick frowned very slightly. “We’ve heard rumors, but nothing to say they’d put anything in place…”

“It’s been in place for some time. I was taken to what we called the convent. Sarah House. I can’t tell you where it is, other than that it’s a few hours’ drive from London and a few hours’ hard walking from here, roughly southwest. At the convent my contraceptive implant was removed and I was given this.” He touched his ear, looking around the table at everyone in turn, making them meet his eyes; all but Teddy, of course. “I was given a new name and told I was to join the novitiate. The building had two wings, one for the novices and one for the professed members. We wore white habits, they wore red. There was no contact between the two groups. The convent was essentially a prison—we slept in locked cells and there were guards everywhere—but we spent our days in a sort of pseudo-monastic routine, lessons and religious services all meant to reinforce the point that we had one purpose, to serve the Empire by spawning more secondaries. The services all heavily featured a select few readings, such as the Annunciation: ‘ _Ecce ancilla domini:_ behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it done to me according to Thy will.’ Where the name comes, you see. Also the assumption of the renunciation of our will. They were also fond of the story of Sarah, from Genesis.”

“The first omega,” Caro said.

“Yes, everybody knows that bit. Sarah bewails her barrenness, the Lord makes her fertile beyond the lot of ordinary women. What tends to get left out are the passages that followed. “And Abraham, having exhausted himself, went to sleep; and yet Sarah still burned with the fires of lust. And all who were within reach of her scent were filled with lust also, and they came to her and knew her, for a night and a day, until her time of burning was ended.’ Abraham wasn’t pleased, of course, but God told him to stop whingeing because the children were legally his, and then he told him to bond with her next time: ‘For when alpha and omega have bonded they will lust only one for the other until they are separated by death.”

“But they weren’t planning to bond you,” Caro said. He could see in her eyes that she already understood what he meant. “They just wanted to…”

“Breed us, yes. The plan is to give us to unbonded high-status alphas, to be used not just by them but by their underlings as well, just as with Sarah.”

There was a long silence.

“That’s vile,” Beth said, speaking for the first time. “I thought what this lot had done to us was bad but this, this is…”

“Sexual slavery,” Caro said. Her dark eyes were snapping with fury. “How did you escape? Will there be others?”

“No,” Sherlock said. He looked down at his plate, thinking of Molly, of Sister Jane Seymour. “I escaped from the infirmary. It wasn’t guarded; I think they thought us too weak to be a danger. They will have rectified that mistake.” He hoped the nurses hadn’t been punished too severely.

“Who is being sent there? You had been convicted of treason, had the others—“

“Most were actually volunteers,” Sherlock said. “Well, of a sort. Omegas can’t own property now, as you know, and all omega/beta or omega/omega marriages were dissolved, so unbonded omegas without an alpha family member have no other options. I even met one who had been bonded, but she and her bondmate had been both convicted of treason. The alpha was executed and she was sent to the order.”

Patrick put his hand to his mouth in the first sign of emotion Sherlock had seen in him. “My God.”

“We have to get the word out,” Caro said to him urgently. “Those omegas who still think they’ll be safe, we have to warn them—“

“We have to get _Sherlock_ out,” Teddy said with unexpected firmness.

Everyone looked at Sherlock. “She’s right,” Caro said. “Beth, are you…”

“I need to move the sheep and get things ready,” Beth said. “We’ll all need to prepare, I think we’re going to be moving a lot of people once this starts getting around.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Patrick said. “Right now we need to be going; it’s getting close to curfew.”

Teddy hugged Patrick and Beth. Beth shook Sherlock’s hand and said, “I’ll see you soon. Have you got a hat or anything? No? I’ll bring you one to cover that up.”

Caro walked the guests out and Teddy began stacking dishes; Sherlock got to work helping her. In spite of his long nap he felt suddenly exhausted, drained by the tension of the meeting. Part of him wanted nothing more than to hole back up in the cellar and be alone, but Teddy’s gentle cheerfulness was oddly soothing. A small cat sidled in and wound around his feet, purring hopefully, and he crouched to stroke it.

Caro came back as Sherlock was drying the last of the dishes and Teddy was filling the kettle. “We need to get you back downstairs,” she said.

“After a cup of tea,” Teddy said, cheerfully, and Caro gave in at once.

When they were all sitting down with cups Teddy said to Sherlock, “When you were in that infirmary. You’d just finished your heat, hadn’t you?”

“Yes.” He was grateful she hadn’t brought it up before the others.

“Did they…”

“No. They put us in padded cells to wait it out.”

“You were alone,” Teddy said and Caro said, “Oh—“ on a sharp exhale, like someone had punched her in the stomach, and then simultaneously they both reached out and rested their hands on him. Sherlock sat very still, eyes fixed on his teacup, pushing the pain down and burying it with anger.

Beth arrived at the ungodly hour of 4 AM, driving a rattling old farm truck and dressed in well-worn work clothes. She handed Sherlock a battered donkey jacket and flat woolen cap, which settled nicely over his ears. From a distance or through the truck window, he could easily be taken for a beta.

Caro gave him a bag of bacon rolls and a flask of hot tea and Teddy gave him a hug, slipping him another book. “In case you get bored,” she said, smiling up at him, and Sherlock hugged her again, harder. The book fit nicely in the jacket packet.

Sherlock and Beth rode along in the early summer dawn in a comfortable silence, sharing the bacon rolls and tea. Sherlock considered her covertly from under his cap. Upper class accent and upbringing but she obviously enjoyed farm work; secondary–born, or previously higher class beta? Either way her parents, if not Beth herself, had probably envisioned a very different life for her.

“The omegas at that convent,” Beth said eventually, as the rising sun lit up the fields round them. “How old were they?”

“If your sibling is old enough to present, you’d best get them out,” Sherlock said, clipped.

“We got my sister out last year. It’s my mother. If I’m caught, would they take her even though she’s bonded?”

Sherlock considered. “Are your parents involved in this?”

“No, not at all…they’re a bit old-fashioned; my mother was furious when my sister left.”

“Should be safe then.” Beth nodded, and the rode on for a bit. “You were littermates,” Sherlock observed. “You miss her.”

“Yeah, I do. She’s in Norway now, or maybe gone on elsewhere, I don’t know.”

They rode on in silence after that. An hour or so after sunrise Beth pulled to a stop on a bumpy, rutted track alongside a long low building in an empty pasture. “Home sweet home,” she said. “It doesn’t look like much, but the roof’s sound and everything you need’s behind the hay. All these fields are ours so you’re safe if you want to stretch your legs a bit or use the torch at night. I’ll see you at noon tomorrow.”

Sherlock thanked her and she drove off, bumping along the rudimentary road. Then he hopped over the stone wall and went to inspect his new digs. The building was evidently meant for hay storage and now, in late summer, was mostly empty; he startled a few birds, who flew out over his head with indignant calls. Behind a row of hay bales he found a folded camp bed, sleeping bag, and a cooler full of food and water. There was even a bottle of beer.

Sherlock couldn’t help smiling. He was alone, truly alone, for the first time in months, and he went outside and sat on the wall to enjoy it, turning his face up to the sun. He would go for a walk soon, work on getting his strength back, and then he would sit in the sun and read his book. There were much worse ways to spend the day.

Next day Beth picked him up in a tidy sedan, wearing a lilac dress with her hair twisted neatly up under a summer hat. She had brought Sherlock an old carpetbag to put his jumper in and gave him a linen jacket and straw boater to replace the clothes she’d brought the day before, instantly transforming Sherlock from unconvincing farmer to unconvincing alpha twit. “Keep your window up,” Beth advised him. She drove him a few hours to the university town where her brother lived with five other students, her papers evidently good enough that the Guardians at the checkpoint waved her through with barely a glance at Sherlock.

The students’ house was cluttered and noisy and smelled like everything and nothing: beer, dirty socks, alpha male, sweaty feet, marijuana, curry. It was a brilliant strategy, Sherlock thought, hiding him in plain sight; he looked young enough to pass as one of the students, and with his scent at its lowest ebb no one was likely to look twice. He spent the next two days playing cards, eating terrible spag bol, and running an impromptu chemistry tutorial. It was all rather fun. Then they all piled into a huge old car and sailed past the checkpoint, driving to a tiny village where someone’s little old omega gran fed them a lovely home cooked meal and then led Sherlock to a room with rose-patterned wallpaper whilst the other boys drove off in the big car. Next day he was collected by a grey-haired and rather stiff alpha with a prim little moustache and immaculate Rolls-Royce, clearly a retired civil servant, and spent the night in a hidden room in the man’s stuffy attic.

Sherlock knew not to ask questions about the next link on the chain—better that he know as little as possible in case he were captured—but he was taken aback next day when the alpha—Archie--handed him a pale blue suit. “This is a Bonded’s suit,” he said in surprise.

“Yes,” Archie said, his tone implying _obviously_ as clearly as Sherlock could have done himself.

“Don’t you think the lack of bondbite will be a bit obvious? Not to mention the tag.”

“Not when I’ve finished,” Archie said and shut the door.

Well. That was…intriguing, anyway, which was a nice change; being on the run was mostly a mixture of boredom and terror, with boredom predominating. Curious now, Sherlock shaved and showered and nicked a bit of the man’s old-fashioned pomade to smooth his curls. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. Not bad. In fact, if he were being honest, he looked better than not bad: the fit of the suit was decent, and the colour brought out the blue of his eyes. He looked downright good. This was unnerving, as Sherlock did not want to look good: he did not want to look like anything. Sherlock wanted to be invisible.

Feeling irritatingly self-conscious, Sherlock went down the stairs and found himself in a fusty sitting room crowded with watercolours—mostly of the flower garden variety—and aging photos: the stiff civil servant and a slim blond man who had evidently borne him two sets of twins, all boys. The entire family looked rather prim.

“In here,” Archie said from a doorway.

Sherlock followed him into a small side room that was all windows, evidently a former orangery. “Ah,” he said, seeing the easel, “you did the watercolours.”

“I did, but you’ll be my canvas today.”

Archie sat Sherlock on a high stool in front of a mirror and draped a towel around his shoulders. Then he went to work on the back of his neck, painstakingly applying miniscule strips of putty and painting on stage makeup with a tiny brush. Sherlock, bored, tried to watch in the mirror, but Archie kept firmly pushing his head down. “There,” he said, handing Sherlock a mirror.

“That’s…quite good, really,” Sherlock said, angling his head to get a better look. The mark looked totally convincing to him: raised pink scar tissue and teeth marks. “How long will it last?”

“It won’t hold up to washing, but it will stay a day or so if you aren’t too restless a sleeper. I’ve an ascot for you for tomorrow just in case. I’ve had a lot of practice at bondbites. This, though…” Archie considered the tag as though it were a speck of dust on his Rolls. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Where did you get it?”

Sherlock put the mirror down and looked at him. “Are any of your sons omegas?”

“One. He’s dead. Married a beta and emigrated; they were living in California.”

“I’m sorry. But in that case, better that you not know.”

Archie nodded curtly. “I’ve some skin tape, use it for tattoos and so forth. I may be able to manage something with that.”

In the end Archie covered the red tag with the tape and then dabbed more makeup around it, blending the edges and softening the sharp corners of the tag. When he’d finished Sherlock’s ear looked misshapen but otherwise unremarkable—he doubted anyone would notice unless they were looking directly at his ear. “Lucky for me you’re a better makeup artist than you are a painter,” Sherlock said, admiring it.

“Don’t be cheeky,” Archie said crisply, wiping his hands. “Got in the way of doing makeup when my mate took up with the local theatre. I’d have more time for painting if I weren’t busy making you lot look respectable.”

Sherlock grinned and Archie dropped him a half wink.

They drove out in the Rolls-Royce, Sherlock in back and Archie, wearing a neat chauffeur’s cap and black jacket, driving. Archie had turned out to also be a talented forger, and Sherlock held a travel pass declaring him Lord Peter Dalgleish, bondmate of Sir Adam. The Guardian at the checkpoint didn’t even give it a second glance, to Sherlock’s relief. After that they drove around the countryside for a bit—Sherlock rather thought they doubled back a few times, so Sherlock wouldn’t be able to locate Archie’s house, which was clever—and at one point Sherlock caught sight of the sea, intermittent flashes of sunlight breaking through the overcast sky to glint off the waves. The sea. Escape. _Freedom._

After a time they turned off onto a winding drive between two massive and rather crumbling gateposts. The house when they came to it was splendid, a massive old Georgian built of warm stone, but the grounds were shabby and overgrown; all the men away at the wars, presumably.

“You’re visiting Lord and Lady Merton,” Archie said quietly as he pulled the car up. “Daniel and Kate. Kate is your second cousin once removed.”

Lady Merton turned out to be an elegant omega woman, with faded ginger hair and wide, rather sad green eyes. Her greeting had an overly bright, artificial quality that put Sherlock’s teeth on edge. “Peter darling, how lovely!’ she gushed, nodding to the elderly butler to take Sherlock’s carpetbag. “You look divine. Come along and let’s have tea in my parlor.”

The parlor was a spacious room overlooking the gardens, just shabby enough to be comfortable. It should have been lovely, but the overcast sky and general air of neglect made the garden seem gloomy, and Lady Merton’s brittle cheer was putting Sherlock’s teeth on edge. He couldn’t tell if she was ill at ease because of his presence or that of the maid, a stiff awkward young woman who seemed to want to be there even less than Sherlock did. She’d been at university, Sherlock thought, watching her; professional career planned out but of course now only trade schools were open to betas and even then really only beta men…no wonder she was resentful.

“It’s been a lovely summer, don’t you think?” Lady Merton was saying. “Not so much today, bit dreary. I do hope it’s better tomorrow, we’ve a friend who’s going to take us out on his yacht.”

Sherlock’s spirits lifted; this was how they would get him out of the country, surely. “How nice,” he said with as much polite disinterest as he could manage. “And how are the children?” He’d noticed the pictures: triplets, two freckled boys and a girl with her mother’s ginger hair and sad eyes.

“Oh, quite well. The boys are home for the holidays now, and Olivia—she has a governess now, of course, since she presented last spring. That will be all, Sadie, you can go back to the kitchens now.” This last was somewhat sharp. “I am sorry. She’s rather dreadful,” Lady Merton went on in an undertone when Sadie had closed the door rather more firmly than necessary. “Our old maid, Lily, was the one who managed all this; her brother was a fisherman who’d turned smuggler—people out, goods in. But they got caught, you see. We hardly dared breathe for weeks for fear they’d given us up, but…well. Archie’s found someone new, someone with a yacht. The story is that you and I are going out on a sort of hen party and then I’ll say you’ve gone on with one of our friends.”

“You should get your daughter out,” Sherlock said in a low voice. “At once. Tomorrow. Say she’s invited to the hen party now she’s out; say she met an old school friend and went home with her as well. Say anything you like, just get her out.”

Lady Merton was already shaking her head. “”We’ll get her out if we have to, but not yet. She’s only just sixteen.”

“Then go with her,” Sherlock said.

“We can’t,” Lady Merton said quietly. “There isn’t enough money for us to start over in a new country. This house and lands are all we have. It’s been in my husband’s family for generations and one day it will belong to my sons; how can we possibly give it up?”

“And what do you think will happen to your daughter if you stay?”

Lady Merton looked away, out at the dreary gardens. “Maybe things will get better. And if not…she’ll make a match, I suppose. It’s not the life I imagined for her, but she’s not the adventurous sort, not really. She’ll probably be quite happy as a wife and mother. And if she wishes it, of course we’ll get her to France.”

“You don’t understand,” Sherlock said. He was leaning forward, trying to keep his voice down. “Maybe you’re right, and your family name and status will protect your daughter. Maybe she’ll marry. But this Jane Austen fantasy you’re imagining, some dashing young officer with a brilliant future—that’s never going to happen, because _there aren’t enough of us._ Very soon having a bondmate is going to become a privilege reserved only for a small elite. The rest of the alphas will have to make do with sharing what’s left. Do you understand me?” He touched the tag on his ear. “Can you see this under the makeup? It’s a tag. Perhaps you’ve seen one before if you keep sheep on your lands. It means I’m breeding stock, destined to be shared out amongst every alpha who fancies a go until I’ve whelped a litter and then it’s on to the next lot. You have an old name but no money and little influence. How long do you think your daughter will be safe?”

The colour had drained from Lady Merton’s face, leaving her wide eyes dark against the white. “She’s only a child,” she whispered.

“I’ll look after her,” Sherlock said, meaning it.

Lady Merton looked out the window again. Sherlock could read her thoughts so clearly he thought the maids could probably hear them two floors below.

“I’ll get her out,” Lady Merton said finally without looking at him. Her spine has stiffened a bit, but not enough, he though, not enough. “I’ll get her out. But not yet.”

Sherlock went to bed that night feeling deeply uneasy. Part of this was the guest room, which—like the rest of the house—was elegant, slightly moth-eaten, and oppressively gloomy. The whole place was decaying, he thought, eyeing a patch of damp on the ceiling with disfavor; rotting from both its physical failings and the creeping malaise of its inhabitants. Lady Merton’s anxiety, the servants’ barely-hidden malevolence. He couldn’t wait to leave. This time tomorrow, he thought with a jolt, he might very well be in France.

For the first time, Sherlock wondered how he was going to manage as a refugee. He assumed some sort of program was in place to provide at least temporary food and shelter. That and access to suppressants was all he really needed—he’d find work of some sort soon enough, whatever would earn him enough money to get to Toronto, where Gregson had promised to help him. He would have his life back again.

In the middle of the night Sherlock jolted awake, knowing somehow with a deep instinctive certainty that something had gone spectacularly wrong. For a moment he didn’t know what had woken him, but then he heard the crunch of tyres on gravel and lights swept across the window. Even as he was cursing himself for a fool—he’d known, _known_ the maid suspected something, felt her resentment like a ghost in the house, why hadn’t insisted they go last night—Sherlock was leaping from the bed and shoving his feet into his shoes. He didn’t stop for anything else. He went straight out the door and down the hall to where he knew the servants’ stairs would be, barreling down the stairs and out into a dark kitchen, hearing the first distant shouts from the front of the house as he banged out the back. Through the kitchen gardens, flying as fast as he could through the soft misty rain, not looking for cover or direction but simply fleeing. If he could make it to the coast, find a boat, any boat…

He heard a shout and a moment later heard the horrible sound of tyres bumping over rough ground and then the glow of headlights behind him. Sherlock ran faster, hearing his breath panting out in unrecognizable, desperate sobs, because he had no choice: he couldn’t go back. He would die first, find a cliff or a bridge and simply fling himself over. He heard a sharp _crack_ behind him and felt a fleeting astonishment—surely they wouldn’t shoot an omega?—but now the lights were getting closer and in a panic he put on a sudden burst of speed, seeing woods looming ahead. If he could just make it to the trees: they couldn’t drive in there, he could zig and zag and find some water to cover his trail and…

There was another _crack_ and this time Sherlock felt the sting in the back of his thigh. He kept going—almost there, he was almost there—even as his numb leg collapsed under him and he hauled himself back to his feet by sheer furious determination and tried to run forward again, but he was falling now, falling and falling into darkness and then into nothing at all.

Weeks later, back at the convent, Sherlock saw the girl. She was walking with the novitiate out to the gardens as the order came in. She was pale, with a ribbon of ginger hair visible under her cap, and her mother’s sad green eyes.

He never saw her again.


	7. Chapter 7

_London_

_Now_

At first the tingling was distant, barely a distraction, like distant lightning. It could be ignored. Sherlock told himself this, firmly, lying in bed and feeling his usual despair now laced with the terror of facing the next two days. He squeezed his eyes shut, just for a minute, thinking of the twenty-eight and a half pills lying in the cupboard. Then he got up.

For the first hour or so the prickling was manageable. Even as it grew the exercise helped—rowing, in particular, felt almost exquisite, the hard push with his legs stretching his kinking lower spine. By the time he started to run in place he had begun to prickle all over, though he kept going, doggedly pushing forward even as heat lubricant began trickling down his legs.

Toward the end he gave up. He didn’t bother to make the bed—this was one time that sweaty, twisted sheets would be unremarkable, even expected. He just went straight to the bathroom and stuck his head under the tap, trying to cool off. When he finally heard the key turning in the lock he turned, shaking himself like a dog, and said, “I won’t be going out today. Effie, would you be so kind as to direct Mrs. Hudson to prepare the dungeon?”

The NeoTories had tried to convince everyone to return to the Victorian euphemism of the Red Room, but Sherlock was a firm believer in calling a spade a spade. As a child he’d found the room in the cellar of their country house terrifying—the thick stone walls, the heavy iron bars—and doubly so once he’d learned the room’s original purpose. Now, though….he hated the room as much as he’d ever hated anything, or to be strictly accurate he hated the necessity of it. They had been told gruesome stories in the convent of foolish omegas living alone and unprotected, going into heat with only thin modern walls between them and the rutting alphas who tore them to pieces. He’d fought being taken to the dungeon the first time, but he hadn’t fought again.

Effie took the breakfast tray away with her, promising to bring back a pitcher of water, and Phillips shaved Sherlock with quick efficiency. He knew by now Sherlock would not bathe and instead he turned on the rarely-used shower taps, turning the water all the way to ice cold. Sherlock dropped his damp clothing to the ground and practically dove in, desperate for relief from the fire that seemed to rage beneath his skin. The cold soothed him for a few moments, but it was short lived. As soon as Sherlock tried to wash he found himself thrusting forward into his soapy hand, his other fingers shoving up into his wet and throbbing entrance entirely of their own volition. He was close, closer than he’d realized. Sherlock turned off the water and leaned against the cool tile. “Phillips!” he shouted.

The robe Phillips brought him was of the thinnest possible linen, but it was still too hot. Sherlock couldn’t stand it. The fine fabric brushed over his rigid cock and he knew he was only seconds away from tearing the robe off and spreading himself over the nearest horizontal surface to get whatever relief he could from grinding into it. There were other people there now, betas, useless, and he snarled at them helplessly.

“Here now, drink this,” Mrs. Hudson said briskly. She handed Sherlock a glass of water, which he gulped down in an instant, and then a second glass: “This is my own mother’s recipe for heat tonic, helps take the edge off a bit.”

The drink tasted faintly of juniper, which might have been some sort of herbal concoction but was, Sherlock thought, more likely gin. Even better. Omegas were forbidden alcohol nowadays, but a few nips at the start of heat had a long if mostly unmentioned history (not that Mrs. Turner had been a believer, of course). A distant and fast-dwindling part of his brain was fascinated to notice that the sensation spreading through him was not warmth, as might usually be experienced after a stiff drink, but coolness. It was lovely. “Brilliant,” he managed. “Let’s go.”

They got him down the stairs, two of the guard-footmen practically carrying him, Sherlock gritting his teeth not to writhe. Down into the dim basement, past the wine cellars, through the heavy iron barred door and into the Red Room.

The dungeon was in the safest park of the house: deep in the cellars, with thick stone walls and a whole storey between Sherlock and any window that might let a wisp of scent out into the world. Originally the room had been built for bonded couples and unbonded virgins, of course, who would spend the entirety of the heat there, with locked iron doors at the top and bottom of the stairs and beta servants to fetch and carry. Now the doors would stay open, and rigid protocol determined who would enter.

“That woman from the Order will be here any minute,” Mrs. Hudson said, settling herself into the chair next to the bed. Sherlock ignored her. He collapsed onto the bed, groaning and writhing. “Sheba! Pull that robe down, please. At my age!”

Sherlock honestly didn’t care if Mrs. Hudson saw him naked, not right now, not with his cock throbbing with desperation and fluid streaking his thighs. His arse felt as glowing pink as a baboon’s, as though his swollen rim were actually pulsing with light. “Can you give me something. More tonic. _Anything.”_

“You know I can’t. Now if you want more water…”

Sherlock groaned again and rolled over, rutting into the sheets, spreading his legs to try to get some cool air where his body was hottest. “Fuck!” he shouted, voice muffled by the mattress.

Sherlock could hear Mrs. Hudson over by the dungeon door, crisply giving instructions to one of the maids; probably deploying troops and refreshment for the contingent of alphas that had been invited to rut. Sherlock pressed his fingers in and rocked, the twin sensations of friction and pressure providing some relief from the pressure in his spine. Better. He rocked and rocked, occasionally spasming in a brief fluttering orgasm that gave him only a few seconds’ respite. The _petit mort,_ they called it, ordinary like a beta’s orgasm, nothing like the _grand mort_ a knot would give him.

Through the fog of lust a sound penetrated: the click of hard-soled shoes, a noise that still had the power to send a jolt of terror through his gut. Sherlock pushed his sweaty hair out of his eyes and looked up to see a black-clad abbess, stern of mien and with a cattle prod at her waist.

“He’s to keep the robe on until his commander takes him,” the abbess said to Mrs. Hudson as though Sherlock were not even present.

“Then get him down here,” Sherlock snarled.

The abbess stared down her nose at him, looking him over for signs of sexual readiness, presumably. Sherlock sat up on his knees, grinding his arse down into his heels and arching his back involuntarily. “ _Now,_ God damn you!” he shouted into her face.

“Robe,” the abbess said indifferently.

Sherlock hadn’t realized he’d worked the robe half off and it was now twisted around his neck and arms. He thrashed around, getting progressively more tangled, until the abbess came over and briskly tugged it straight. He was so desperate by now, so throbbingly hard, that his cock jerked and sputtered a weak jet of semen at the brush of fabric. Sherlock gritted his teeth together and pressed his arse into his heels again, back bowing until he bent almost double.

There was an ugly shout from the staircase and Sherlock cracked his eyes open to see the Commander, spittle flying through the bite guard and eyes blazing, barreling through the barred entrance to the dungeon. Some primitive part of Sherlock’s brain reacted in terror—this was not his alpha, not his bonded, this alpha had no right to his body—and he made a last-ditch effort to escape, scrambling backward across the bed.

The Commander caught him by the ankles and yanked. There was nothing soft and pathetic about him now: he was in full rut, roaring in fury as Sherlock struggled under his hands. He held Sherlock pinned as he yanked open his own flies, not bothering to undress further, and then he ripped the robe from neck to hem. It was his right as head of the household to remove Sherlock’s clothing: a sign that no one had had him previously. The scent of the Commander’s alpha musk hit Sherlock like a drug. He still struggled as the Commander flipped him easily and pulled him closer, but it was a token effort. He knew better than to fight too much; his first heat he had scratched and snarled until the abbess ordered him restrained, and that was much worse. Some of the alphas found it exciting.

Besides, Sherlock no longer wanted to struggle. He was so desperate for relief that even as he tried to wriggle out of the Commander’s grasp he was spreading his legs and pressing up, offering himself wet and open and begging. The Commander gripped him by the hips and pulled him backwards, essentially impaling Sherlock on his enormous alpha cock, and Sherlock threw back his head and howled.

For a bit the sheer bliss of being pounded by a full-sized alpha phallus was almost enough. Sherlock came, over and over, the sheets beneath him growing soaked and sticky, shouting in helpless unwanted pleasure. The Commander pressed him down onto the bed and growled, hot breath on Sherlock’s neck, prevented from biting by the rigid bite guard. The Commander was huge and hard and he was slamming into Sherlock hard enough to bruise, hands still gripping his hip and arm, and Sherlock kept coming, but he knew the Commander would not be able to knot him. He never had.

Sherlock made a low sound of frustration and pushed back, trying to get more pressure where he needed it, and the Commander shouted something garbled into his ear and came himself. The force of him slamming into Sherlock’s buttocks jolted him into another weak orgasm and he almost sobbed with frustration as the Commander’s bulk collapsed on top of him, pinning him down. Not enough. How long had the Commander been at it? As head of the household he was entitled to go until he tired, but even in rut alphas had some degree of refractory period, and Sherlock needed satisfaction _now._

The Commander lasted for two more rounds that only left Sherlock even more frantic. He was followed by his deputy, a small man with a disproportionately huge cock but no idea what to do with it, who was even more unsatisfying than the Commander.

By now Sherlock was aching: entire pelvis throbbing, cock dribbling, tears leaking from his eyes. The minute the deputy finished he had his hands on himself again, trying to push his clenched fist in far enough to make himself come. He would have fucked anyone, any alpha at all, two alphas at once if that was what it took.

Fortunately it didn’t come to that. The next alpha through the gate was a woman, dark haired and dark eyed, and Sherlock groaned in relief. He remembered her. The alpha’s name was Janine. She was not technically under Pitts’ command—she was a liaison from the Ministry of Propaganda—but the Propaganda Minister, Magnussen, had no ancilla.

Janine did not manhandle him into position. She smiled at him through the bite guard, teeth showing, as she ripped off her black uniform and crawled up onto the bed to straddle him. She even took a few moments to fondle him, stroking his rigid cock as he whimpered and lifted his hips in entreaty. Her unsheathed cock was huge and tantalizing; Sherlock _needed_ it, now.

Finally finally finally Janine shifted between his legs, lifted him onto her lap, and slid in. _Jesus._ This was more like it. Sherlock grabbed two handfuls of bedclothes and arched his back so far only his shoulders were on the bed as Janine set to it, mating him urgently, filling his nose with her rich alpha musk and his body with hers, pushing the edge of pleasure higher and harder. Sherlock could hear her harsh breathing and his own high keening, but it was distant, drowned out by the roar of blood in his ears. He was so close, so close, almost out of his head entirely, and then suddenly his body opened to her and her knot filled him, slotting into place with a rush of sensation so overwhelming Sherlock could not hear himself scream.

The _grand mort_ was to a regular orgasm what an earthquake was to a passing lorry. Sherlock’s whole body convulsed with pleasure, over and over and over—the orgasm continued for as long as the knot was in contact with the inner ring, which could be as long as several minutes. It was like flying, like the best high he’d ever had, wave after wave of ecstasy so intense that his mind eventually shorted out through sheer overload and he lost consciousness.

The first time Sherlock had been knotted he’d thought, in the dazed aftermath, that he finally understood why the Empire would go to such lengths to preserve their dwindling stock of omegas. The experience was said to be even more overwhelming for alphas, who had been known to go mad if denied access to an omega they had knotted, even without bonding. Now, in the throes of heat, Sherlock was barely awake before he was shouting out to the abbess to get another alpha in, _now._

“It’s not meant to be like that,” Molly had said, back at the convent. They had been sitting with Sherlock on a sheltered bench in the garden, she and Sherlock and Henry all in their full red habits. Sherlock had been interrogated after his capture—not gently—and then beaten on the soles of his feet for running; walking was still painful. “We’re meant to mate with a bondmate, to knot and then rest for a while. We can rest because our body senses the bonded’s scent and we know we’re safe. This—this serial mating, this gangbanging—we’re not designed for that. We’ll wear out.”

So there were precautions, but they were next to useless when Sherlock woke within minutes of Janine leaving, sensing he’d been abandoned and desperate to mate again. The abbess nodded to the guard and in minutes another alpha was charging in, already stripped down and roaring.

And so it went. Most of the alphas were disappointing—Sherlock got a new one, a mere kid barely out of school, so pheromone-crazed that he came practically as soon as he’d shoved in—but he was followed by the head of the Guardians. This was a huge brute of a man with a cock the size of a rhino’s who had a truly impressive ability to fuck as long as it took for Sherlock to open to him. Since Sherlock by that point had been had by four disappointing alphas in a row, it did not take very long.

Another knotting, another blackout. When Sherlock dragged himself back to awareness he was briefly aware of being exhausted, already sore from the incessant pounding and muscle contractions, but he was almost immediately too desperate to care. The abbess forced a bottle of water on him and he drank down two before she nodded and it all started back up again. A parade of slavering, snarling, faceless men, gripping hands and big cocks and the incessant spasms of orgasm and _not enough, not enough._

Nicholls came last. Sherlock bared his teeth when he saw him, making an effort to get away in spite of his desperation, but Nicholls caught him easily and pushed him face down into the bed, shoving his thighs apart. He pushed his thumbs into Sherlock’s opening, growling at the rush of semen, and massaged at the rim of the knot ring until Sherlock was howling and spreading his legs on his own. “You want it,” Nicholls breathed, hot on Sherlock’s neck, “you want it, beg for it,” and Sherlock screamed hoarsely, “ _Please!”_

Nicholls kept his thumbs in place as he shoved in and Sherlock felt his body explode open, the tide of orgasm washing over him even as his body opened for the knot and he screamed with the pleasure of it. It was the most intense orgasm he’d had yet and he almost thought he couldn’t bear it, his body convulsing under Nicholl’s as Nicholls pinned his wrists to the bed and roared, jerked by Sherlock’s bucking body, coming and coming and driving the sensation higher until Sherlock blacked out even as his body continued to shudder.

When Sherlock woke he was momentarily nauseated with shame and horror but that did not last long. He was already frantic with need. The Commander came back, the fury of his rut driven even higher by scenting Sherlock on every alpha who had had him in the intervening hours, bruising Sherlock’s arms as he pounded Sherlock into the mattress. Sherlock’s desperation seemed to be mounting with his exhaustion. Janine knotted him again and someone new turned up, another woman, who managed to knot him as well. He was drinking thirstily between matings and yet his mouth seemed to stay dry, his voice completely gone now from shouting and dehydration. The mingled alpha scents seemed to be everywhere. It made him frantic, rutting into the mattress and spreading his legs for each alpha even as he whimpered in pain as their hard cocks pushed into his abraded opening. The pain ratcheted up his arousal, making the _petits morts_ more intense and inducing a blackout orgasm almost as soon as the rhino-sized Guardian commander mounted him.

Most omega’s heats lasted somewhere around twenty-four to twenty-seven hours. Every commander arranged the heats differently: some used it as currency, currying favor and rewarding underlings, getting through as many alphas as possible before the heat ended; others stuck to the prescribed minimum of six so that everyone would get more turns. Pitts seemed to be somewhere in between, with everyone getting at least two goes. The Commander himself usually had Sherlock three times. Sherlock, who was now so exhausted he could barely move, greeted the sight of the Commander with relief: at least he was nearly done. And still the heat drove him, making him rock his hips and endlessly come, his ceaselessly hard cock jerking exhausted dribbles as he was mounted over and over.

Finally, after Janine came again, Sherlock passed out and did not wake up.

Sherlock came to in his own room. After the gloom of the cellars the dim daylight filtering through the curtains seemed blinding, and he squinted against it to make out the stolid form of Effie, sitting in the chair by the window knitting something in utilitarian-looking grey wool. She glanced up as he stirred. “All right?”

“Water,” Sherlock croaked. It came out a voiceless rasp.

Effie set her knitting aside and poured him a glass of water from a large pitcher. Sherlock’s throat was so parched that the first gulp felt like drinking broken glass, but the pain eased as he gulped thirstily. Effie poured him a second glass and he drained that too. “Could I trouble you for some tea?” he said hoarsely. “With honey, if there is any.”

“Yeah, course. It’ll be faster if I pop down, will you be all right?”

“Fine.”

Sherlock waited until her heard her slow footsteps trudging off down the stairs before he slipped from the bed. Moving slowly and painfully, he lifted the panel from his secret compartment and pulled out the morning-after pill, feeling a surge of relief at seeing it untouched in its hiding place. He replaced the panel and returned to bed. He swallowed down the pill, drank another glass of water, and tucked the little blister pack into his pillowcase to be disposed of later. Thank God. Sherlock eased himself stiffly back down, turned his face away from the windows, and was asleep long before the tea arrived.

The next time Sherlock woke in darkness, with a shock of unease: something was off. He frowned, straining his eyes until he made out the shape of the chair by the window. It was empty. That was wrong; someone should have been with him at all times until he was fully recovered. Perhaps the maid had just stepped out to the toilet? Sherlock glanced at the door just in time to see a looming figure turn away from it, tucking the keys into his pocket. Nicholls.

Sherlock went completely still even as his heart rate kicked into overdrive. He had heard of this happening: occasionally alphas who had knotted failed to come out of rut when the heat ended. They became dangerous, obsessed with continuing to mate and convinced that they and the omega in question were meant to be bonded. If Nicholls meant to take him, maybe even bite him, Sherlock would have no way to fight him off, not in this condition, in a room he knew all too well contained nothing that could be used as a weapon.

Sherlock felt a wave of despair, trapped and weakened and still, somehow, desperately thirsty—if only he could have a drink of water, maybe he could think of— _oh._

Nicholls must have seen Sherlock’s eyes go wide. He grinned, not his usual smirk but a feral leer, moving toward the bed. Sherlock heard his ragged breathing. The bulge of Nicholl’s erection was unmistakable even in the darkness, straining the fabric of his trousers.

“You’ve been waiting for me, haven’t you?” Nicholls said in a low whisper. The sound of it seemed to crawl along Sherlock’s skin. “We’re going to have some proper fun now, no more mask, no more cunt abbess with her fucking cattle prod…” he slid a hand under the blankets and between Sherlock’s legs, pushing his fingers in where Sherlock was still stretched and swollen. Sherlock clamped his teeth to keep from hissing and Nicholls exhaled hard, feeling the residual lubrication coating his hand. “You want it.” He was almost panting, fumbling with his belt with his free hand. “Look at you, you’re gagging for it, you’re so wet for me—“

Nicholls took his eyes off Sherlock’s for a split second to look down at his belt and Sherlock seized his chance. He shot his arm out and grabbed the heavy silver water pitcher, swinging it in a wide desperate arc and smacking it solidly into the side of Nicholls’ head. Water flew everywhere and Nicholls staggered, unable to catch himself with his hand still buried deep in Sherlock’s body, and Sherlock brought his knee up into his groin. Nicholls gave a single grunt and went to his knees and Sherlock twisted free, reared up, and swung the pitcher again, this time two-handed and with all his strength. The heavy metal connected with Nicholls’ skull with a loud _crack_ and he dropped to the floor, unmoving.

Sherlock stayed where he was for a moment, breathing hard and mind racing, before he carefully replaced the pitcher on the table. Nicholls was still breathing, but there was blood trickling from his ear, and Sherlock rather thought he’d fractured his skull. Still, no sense taking chances. He pulled the laces from Nicholls’ shoes and tied his ankles and wrists using simple square knots. Then he took the keys from Nicholls’ pocket, unlocked the door, and went down the corridor.

The first bedroom Sherlock checked was empty, but the second turned out to be a dusty bedroom, with an old four-poster bed and a cut-glass vase on the mantle. Excellent. Sherlock returned to his room and dragged Nicholls unceremoniously down the hall and into the bedroom, where he deposited him on the floor and locked him in. Now to locate assistance.

Mrs. Hudson and the cook had their bedrooms off a narrow hallway behind the kitchens, and Sherlock identified Mrs. Hudson’s easily: the cook was snoring like a freight train behind the other door. He tapped softly—Mrs. Hudson would be a light sleeper—and a moment later the door opened to reveal the housekeeper, wrapped hastily in a dressing gown and blinking like an owl. “Sheba!”

“Shhhh,” Sherlock hissed, dragging her back into the bedroom. He listened anxiously for a moment, but then the cook’s snores started up again, and he breathed out in relief and pulled the door shut behind him.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” Mrs. Hudson scolded in a whisper. “What’s wrong?”

“Nicholls has gone rut mad. I had to knock him out with a water pitcher. He’s locked up in one of the extra bedrooms.” Sherlock held out the keys.

Mrs. Hudson just stared at him, mouth round with shock. “Rut mad! Well, I never trusted the look of that man, I don’t mind telling you, but I never thought of something like that! I suppose I’ll need to ring the Guardians—“

Sherlock shook his head. “No. You can’t. Alphas only suffer rut madness if they’ve knotted. If the Commander finds out, he’ll think I encouraged him, maybe even invited him, and I’ll be blamed.”

Mrs. Hudson frowned. “But didn’t…”

“No,” Sherlock said, clipped. “He didn’t.”

“Ohh.” Understanding seemed to be dawning. “So they don’t all manage to, er…”

“No.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Hudson said again. She considered a minute. “Well, that’s not much of a surprise, I suppose, though perhaps the Commander was rather more sporting in his younger days, do you think? And don’t fuss about finding Captain Nicholls more exciting, dear. My late husband—“

“Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock interrupted. The adrenaline was wearing off now; he was beginning to be aware of how much he still hurt. “Who was meant to be in my room?”

“Meg.” Mrs. Hudson’s face darkened. “She’ll be out on her ear without a character first thing in the morning, I’ll tell you that.”

“No, don’t. We don’t know how he got her out of there and besides, we’re going to need her.”

Meg was horrified when she understood what had happened. She burst into tears of guilt and terror: endangering an omega was a crime, and even just being turned out of her job would be devastating. Sherlock had not spent the past several months watching Meg build his fires and fetch his trays without deducing everything about her, and he knew her family could not survive without her income.

“All right, all right,” he finally said impatiently. His voice was still hoarse and he wished, once again, for a drink of water. “We believe you. Of course you’d accept it if Nicholls told you the Commander wanted me to have a guard for the night; you’re far too stupid to question something like that. Now shut up, we need you to listen.”

To her credit, Meg blew one last honk into her handkerchief and straightened, clearly resolved to do anything she could to make amends.

“Nicholls was rut mad,” Sherlock said crisply. “It’s nothing to do with me, I didn’t encourage him, but if the Commander finds out he’s likely to think that I did. Do you understand?”

Meg gave him a look. “Of course I do. I may be stupid, but it’s the same for beta women, innit? The men can’t be blamed, it’s just in their nature, so we must have been asking for it.”

“Precisely. So we need to pretend he was just over excited from the rut. It happens all the time; that’s why we have brothels. But Nicholls couldn’t leave his duties to go haring off to a brothel, so he decided to take advantage of his position here.”

Meg was nodding. Sherlock said, “He’s actually tried that, hasn’t he.”

“With Tilly and me both. I pretended I didn’t know what he wanted and kept out of his way. Tilly told him to fu—she told him she would tell Mrs. Turner. He was having it off with one of the kitchen maids a while back but Cook got wind of it and sent her packing.”

Relations between alphas and betas were officially banned—the Church held them to be one step up from bestiality—but in practice a blind eye was often turned. Secondary/beta marriages had been widespread for decades before the Restoration and in any case there were simply not enough omegas to meet alpha demand.

“Right. But you are a good girl, a moral upstanding girl, so when Nicholls lured you out in the corridor tonight and pulled you into the bedroom you put up a fight and hit him with the vase.”

“Might have got him in the bollocks first,” Meg said. She looked down at Nicholls, still unconscious at their feet, and said, “I don’t think I would have tied him up though. I would have been too scared, and anyway it doesn’t look like he needs it.”

“Fair enough.” Sherlock crouched, wincing, and started untying the shoelace binding Nicholl’s feet. After a moment Meg knelt next to him and went to work on his wrists.

“You’re doing him a favor with this story, you know,” Meg said. “Bloody—“ She was trying to lace Nicholl’s shoe with it still on his foot, but she stopped and yanked it off. “That should go faster. I mean, he might get off.”

“He certainly will not,” Mrs. Hudson said, a hardness in her voice Sherlock had only heard once before. He glanced up, momentarily distracted. A moral relativist, a practiced liar. What had his housekeeper been in her former life? “He won’t be back in this house.”

When they were satisfied with the scene, Sherlock said to Mrs. Hudson, “I think they’ll buy it. Lock me back into my room now and go ring the Guardians; you’re going to pretend I slept through the whole thing.”

Meg looked up at him with her red-rimmed eyes. He had the odd sense that she was seeing him for the first time, and perhaps she was: not as something exotic and unknowable, but a human being like herself. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”

Miraculously, the pitcher still held some water. Sherlock drank it down thirstily and crawled into bed, not even caring that it was still damp, and immediately fell fast asleep.

London.

John stared out the window, unable to tear his eyes away. He hadn’t been back since his wedding to Mary, a lifetime ago, and could not shake the surreal sensation that this was not London at all. The buildings were the same, but he’d never seen the streets so empty. He _knew_ driving privileges were now restricted, _knew_ a fair percentage of the population had fled, or had returned to their native countries (or their parents’) as far back as Brexit, _knew_ that most of the adult male population had been drafted, but none of that was the same as actually being here. Only the buses looked familiar.

“A while since you’ve been back then, sir?” The driver asked, catching his eye. They were on their way from the Guardians’ training facility to London HQ.

“Little while, yeah,” John said noncommittally.

The young lieutenant next to him sniffed. “An improvement if you ask me, now the rabble’s cleared out.”

John ignored him. He wondered if London had looked like this in the Great War, over a hundred years ago: all thin, tired women and a few old men. Even the clothing looked like something out of a history book. The women were all in long skirts and dresses with their hair up, the boys in shabby knickerbockers, the men in ties. Almost everyone wore a hat. “Fashions have certainly changed,” he said to the driver.

The driver nodded. “Morals code. Not much chance for you lot to be out of uniform these days, though.”

John secretly thought his all-black Guardian uniform looked less like the one his great-grandfather had worn and more like something from the Third Reich, but he kept this thought to himself. They seemed to be skirting a more upscale neighborhood. John caught glimpses of women in elegant, feathered hats, nursemaids in starched caps pushing prams or holding the hands of white-gloved children.

“Oh,” the young lieutenant said suddenly in a much less supercilious tone. “Is that—“

Two women were walking up the street ahead of them. For a minute John thought they were in some sort of absurdist costume, like something out of Monty Python: long cloaks and habits with enormous white headdresses like old-fashioned nuns, but the cloaks and habits were the vivid scarlet of fresh blood. Against the grey dreariness of London the color seemed almost shockingly bright.

“Ancillae. Handmaidens,” the driver said.

“I want to see if I can smell them.” The lieutenant scrabbled at his window control and then barked impatiently at the driver, “Why won’t this go down?”

“Disabled it, sir. You don’t want to go hanging out the window bothering them; get the lot of us thrown in a work camp.”

“But that’s what they’re _for,_ isn’t it? To breed?”

“For the commanders,” the driver said, amused. “That’s who they belong to. If you get to be a captain in a household and keep your nose clean, you might get a go when it’s time, but otherwise you’re to treat them like the Princess Royal herself.”

The lieutenant threw himself back in the seat, looking torn between mutiny and disappointment. He turned his head to track the two women as the car passed them. “I’m not going to a household,” he said sulkily. “I’m to have command of one of the checkpoints.” He glared at John. “I suppose _you’re_ going to a household.”

“Ministry security,” John said. That was the plan, anyway; it offered the best chance for him to find out sensitive information. “Not much chance there either.” Or so he hoped.

This seemed to cheer the young lieutenant. “There’s always Sandringham. If we do well we can earn passes on our next leave. Not quite the same as having one in heat, but better than whatever beta slags we can get in London.”

John looked at him, not really trying to conceal his dislike: he outranked the little twat, and had ten years on him as well. “Have you ever even been with an omega before Sandringham?”

The lieutenant reddened. “Have you?”

“No,” John said. He turned deliberately away. Not before, and not then; he’d ripped the pass he’d been given into little pieces and flushed it down the toilet in the dead of night.

They spent the rest of the ride in silence. When they arrived, John thanked the driver and left the sullen lieutenant without another word, following a young Guardian who led him to Sholto’s office.

James stood up, smiling, when John came in and saluted. “Captain Watson.” He gripped John’s hand as he clapped his shoulder, and John felt the crinkle of paper pushed into his palm; he curled his hand around it and slipped the note into his pocket when he pulled out his orders.

“Good to see you again, sir,” he said, passing over the packet. “I hope everything is in order?”

Sholto opened the packet and gave it a cursory glance before dropping it onto the desk. “Quite in order, but there’s been a change in plans. One of our highest-placed commanders has an immediate need for a Guard captain.”

John’s first reaction after the conversation in the car was revulsion, but he could see by the gleam in James’s eye that this commander must be highly placed indeed. He thought of the danger, of the opportunity, and his pulse quickened in a way it hadn’t since he woke in a hospital tent as a prisoner. He forgot all about the possible ancilla. “Very good, sir. May I know who?”

Sholto’s teeth gleamed. “The head of the secret police.”


	8. Chapter 8

Two days later, Sherlock rejoined Molly for their daily outing. He was still stiff and sore—some omegas spent the whole week after heat in bed—but he was already mind-numbingly bored with staying in his room.

“Heard you had a bit of excitement,” Molly said as they set off.

“The guard captain,” Sherlock said. “Got carried away with the rut and tried to take advantage of one of the maids.” A month ago he’d have told her the truth without a second thought, but he’d never been able to shake Mrs. Hudson’s warning, nor the memory of Molly strolling companionably with her commander. He was no longer certain Molly would not tell Commander Adler, and he did not trust Adler at all.

“Oh my God, the poor thing. Is she all right?”

“Better than Nicolls. She smashed a vase over his head.”

“Good for her! So what’s going to happen to him?”

“Work camp, I suppose, if he recovers. He won’t be sent back to us at any rate. We’re to get a new captain, but one hasn’t been assigned yet.” Sherlock changed the subject. “So, did I miss anything?”

“Mmm…Sister Cecilia had her babies, you might have heard the bells. Two boys. I haven’t heard when the visiting will be. Oh, and Sister Anne of Cleves is in kindle, that’s a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? None of us thought her commander had it in him.”

“Of course he didn’t. He’s bent as a corkscrew,” Sherlock said. “Remember when he came for the inspection at the convent? It was obvious then. And I’ve seen him every Sunday making eyes at his undersecretary. That’s who will have done the job, Anne fancies him too; they’ll have all gone at it together--either the commander watched or maybe the undersecretary let him have a go at him whilst he was mounting her. She probably thinks if she plays her cards right she can convince the commander to make a permanent arrangement of it, but that’s a mistake. The undersecretary doesn’t give a fig for either of them and he’ll be up for his own ancilla soon. He’ll be off like a shot.”

“Sherlock, you’re really scary sometimes, d’you know that?”

“I do,” Sherlock said. He grinned in the secrecy of his hood.

Sure enough, Anne of Cleves’ name had been added to the list of the gravid in the prayers of the people, a list that was now headed by Henry. Sherlock did the math in his head: of the twenty ancillae covenanted in the first wave with himself and Molly, only eight were now unkindled. Many had gone into heat right away under the influence of so much unaccustomed alpha hormones and of those half had got pregnant the first time; some had already delivered. The christening for Eglantyne’s babies would not be held until after Easter, which would buy her a little extra time, but then she would be back to Sarah House and a new posting. Rumours were already circulating that returning handmaidens would be sent to Ireland.

Sherlock looked at the list and thought about the twenty-eight pills in his secret compartment. His name would never appear on that list. He had decided that long ago.

_Sarah House_

_Then_

Sherlock had returned to Sarah House with the skin flayed off his feet and his spirit utterly crushed. He had been put back in the infirmary, probably not because of his feet—no effort was made to tend to them—but because he was still in a sort of limbo: no longer in the novitiate, but not part of the order either. Sherlock had felt a brief spark of hope when he saw where he was being taken: all he needed was two minutes with the medicine cupboard and his problems would be over. That soon died. He was shackled to the bed, hard iron manacles sized for women that cut into the tender skin of his ankles and wrists, and not enough give in the chains to allow him to move from the bed. The nurses were new and stared at him in silent loathing. Sherlock did not mind this; he rather felt he deserved it.

With no other options available, Sherlock took the only route open to him. He turned away from his food, closed his eyes, and set about waiting to die.

After three days two guards unexpectedly materialized at his bedside and took hold of Sherlock’s arms, pinning him down as he struggled. A nurse jabbed him in the bicep with one of the same syringes Sherlock had used on the guards and Sherlock noted, oddly clearly in such a fraught moment, that his lips and tongue seemed to go numb before everything else grayed out. When he awoke a drip had been inserted into his arm. He might have cried then, but the drip had not been running long enough for him to have any tears.

Two days later the guards came back. They unfastened the shackles, pulled out the drip, and then half-dragged, half-carried Sherlock along the corridor and down the stairs into the Mother Superior’s office.

“Brother Benedict,” the Mother Superior said, without apparent interest. “Do sit down.”

Sherlock did not stand on his dignity. He was weakened by his confinement and his feet had left bloody smears on the polished floor; he sat down in the wooden chair immediately.

The Mother Superior folded her hands and regarded him dispassionately. “I have called you here today because you have a choice to make,” she said. “It is not, however, the choice I believe you think you have. I wish to make you fully aware of your options.”

Sherlock raised a supercilious eyebrow. “I dare say I can work them out.”

“You came to Sarah House unbonded and unbred, with no prior attachment to any living alpha. You have undergone preliminary instruction as a novice and you have gone through heat, thus establishing that you are fertile. Although you have sinned by running away, you have suffered penance and are thereby forgiven those sins in the eyes of God and the Church. I invite you, therefore, to take your vows as a member of the Order of Ancillae. If you accept, you will take the red habit and come under the protection of the Crown. You will be covenanted to an alpha of noble birth and good standing. As his ancillus, you will be accorded a life of every comfort, with a room of your own, servants to tend you, and leisure to pursue diversions appropriate to your station. You will have the opportunity to socialize with other omegas. During heat, being unbonded, your needs will be met not only by your covenanted alpha but by the alpha members of his household to ensure the greatest chance of conception. Outside of heat, no alpha has any claim upon your body and you will not be called upon to perform such duties as might be expected of a bonded mate.”

“Sexual servitude in a gilded cage,” Sherlock said sardonically. “But only for procreational purposes, of course. How very English.”

“Many beta women would trade places with you in a heartbeat,” the Mother Superior said, eyes narrowing. “You’ve never been hungry, have you, Brother Benedict?”

“Aside from right now?”

“That was your own foolish stubbornness,” the Mother Superior said coldly. “And rather answers my question.”

“Is that my other option? Starving to death? I believe I’ve made my feelings on that quite clear.”

“No, it is not. Your other option is a facility the order maintains at Sandringham for the…comfort,,,of our unbonded alpha officers. Those omegas who are unsuited for life as ancillae, either due to temperament or age, are sent there. You will be fed, but not lavishly. There will be no life of luxury, no diversions, no books or outings. You will be kept in a windowless cell and required to service officers twelve hours a day, except during heat, of course, when you will mate with as many as possible for the duration. The chances of a successful conception are less under these circumstances but it has been known to occur, and in that event you will be removed from the brothel but kept under even stricter guard. If you do not eat you will be fed intravenously. You will be watched at all times. You are valuable to the Empire, Brother Benedict. Your death is not an option.”

Sherlock sat still a long moment, eyes locked on hers. The office seemed very still, so still that he could hear, through the open window, a far-off droning as someone mowed the grass on the front lawn.

The choice was no choice at all, not really, but of course what really mattered was that if he chose the gilded cage there was no way that someone as clever as Sherlock Holmes would not have the means of suicide to hand within a day. The Empire would never have his children or his body.

_And maybe,_ a tiny voice he thought had been silenced forever whispered, _someone as clever as Sherlock Holmes could find a way to escape. On his own, this time, so no one else gets hurt._

Sherlock smiled at the Mother Superior, a patently insincere smile that fooled neither of them. “For He that is mighty has magnified me, and holy is His Name. Who am I to stand against the will of the Lord? I will be delighted to take my vows.”

_London_

_Now_

The next day turned unexpectedly fair, bright and almost springlike, and Sherlock was surprised to realize that he felt rather cheerful. He had plans today to go to the Veilgarden District with Molly and Henry to visit the bookstore and the bakeshop. Ordinarily Henry’s housekeeper was even stricter than Mrs. Turner had been, but he had managed to convince her to make an exception.

“I’ve got my appointment with the midwife tomorrow and I’m sure to be put on bed rest; she said as much the last time,” he told them gloomily. “So it’s the least she can do, really. Rather like a last cigarette before the firing squad.”

At the bookstore Sherlock disappeared to the back room, leaving Molly to browse the cookery books and Henry to ask the shopkeeper’s advice for books to keep him occupied whilst bedridden. Sherlock was working on a new escape plan. On one of his nightly forays into the Commander’s files he had discovered information about a smuggling operation in Bournemouth, apparently connected to some sort of organized resistance, into which the secret police had managed to plant a double agent. Thus far the Eyes had been unable to decode the messages the agent had dutifully copied (nor had Sherlock. Yet) so they were letting the smugglers continue to operate. If Sherlock could manage to get clothing and suppressants, he could easily get to Bournemouth using his map, unmask the traitor, demand his boat, and sail it to the continent and safety. If he could teach himself how to sail. He’d already bought an astronomy book and memorized it, so he was fairly confident in his ability to navigate.

Sherlock was pleased to discover that yachting was among the pointless activities considered appropriate for omegas. He found several books. Of course, he had no idea what sort of boat smugglers favored, but surely the principles were the same? Sherlock picked the most comprehensible book and took it up to the till, where Molly and Henry were patiently waiting.

“Ready?” Molly said brightly. “Let’s get Henry his farewell treat.”

The bakeshop was crowded, but the other ancillae good-humoredly made way for Henry’s enormous bulk. They squeezed their way in to the corner around a tiny table and sipped their tea, nibbling the biscuits to make them last.

“So, are you nervous?” Molly asked Henry.

“Not about dying in childbirth or anything like that. They wouldn’t let me, would they? But I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. I’m not much of a one for pain.”

“Well,” Molly said, clearly searching for something cheering to say, “I suppose it’s only the first one’s painful, right? After that they probably pop right out.”

“Lovely,” Henry said gloomily.

Molly changed the subject. “What about after? Are you hoping your commander will ask to bond with you?”

“Oh God no. Moriarty’s creepy. And I doubt he has any interest in me either, I’ve barely seen him since I came up. Even when he’s in London he’s barely home. Besides, I think the housekeeper rather fancies him herself.”

“But she’s a beta!” Molly said, scandalized.

“So what?” Sherlock said. “Loads of alphas were married to betas before, and it still happens all the time. Alphas with servants, omegas with servants…”

“But what about the children?” Molly asked Henry.

“I never really saw myself as the parental type anyway. I suppose they’ll be raised by nannies, just as I was. Weren’t you?”

“I’m beta-born, remember? My mum did it the old-fashioned way, by herself.”

Henry looked at Sherlock, who said, “I had nannies when I was small, but my father was always quite hands-on. My father was the omega,” he explained for Molly’s benefit.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Molly said.

Sherlock only nodded. He didn’t want to talk about his parents. He didn’t even like to think about them and what had happened whilst he was in hiding.

“I’m glad my mother wasn’t hands-on,” Henry said. Henry’s parents, social climbers from Devon, were NeoTory to the bone; they’d handed Henry over to the order themselves, after he failed to find a suitable match before secondary marriages had been frozen. “I was far better off with the nannies. No, Mrs. Reilly can have my creepy commander, and the nannies can have his creepy kids, and I’ll hope for better luck in Ireland. Who knows, maybe I’ll find true love there.”

Molly raised her teacup in a toast. “To better luck in Ireland,” she said. “And if we all end up there, may it be in the same place.”

Sherlock and Henry raised their cups as well—Sherlock a little reluctantly--and they all drained the last of their tea.

When the car arrived to collect Henry Molly hugged him as best she could and even Sherlock—who loathed both social niceties and physical contact—shook his hand. “Good luck,” Molly said, a slight tremble in her overly-bright voice.

“See you at the presentation,” Henry said. He looked back as he lumbered toward the door, giving a wry little wave. It was the last time Sherlock saw him alive.

Sherlock already had his nose in his book when he got back to the house, so he didn’t even notice when Phillips opened the door before he reached it.

“There he is!” Mrs. Hudson trilled and Sherlock, startled, slid the yachting guide beneath his prayer book. “Sheba dear, this is our new security chief, Captain Watson.”

“Pleasure,” a man’s voice said and Sherlock was so surprised at being addressed by an alpha that he glanced up. He saw a compact man in a Guardian’s black uniform, cropped sandy hair and a golden tan. He’d been at the front then, not long ago. Sherlock dropped his gaze quickly and nodded.

“I’m making a tour of the house, checking to see where there might be any weak points,” Captain Watson said. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to your rooms before you came home, but I’ll do my best not to disturb you.”

Sherlock nodded again, turning for the stairs. His book was already forgotten. Why would an Army captain join the Guardians now? Had Lady Smallwood a hand in this too? Or was the commander suspicious, and had arranged for an Eye to keep a closer watch on his household?

Sherlock climbed the stairs deep in thought. He was going to need a lot more data.

John lay on his back, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. The room reminded him a bit of officer quarters back in Afghanistan. The bed was a little softer, the room a little bigger, but the overall air of Spartan efficiency was the same.

Getting John in as the guard captain of the secret police commander’s household had been a major stroke of luck, and John knew he should be thinking about his next move: gaining the commander’s confidence, access to his inner circle, his files, his secrets. Or at the very least dealing with the broken coal door in the cellars. But somehow his thoughts kept returning to the omega. He’d known there would be one—it had come up in the briefing, after Sholto had filled him in on his official duties in the rapid-fire monotone of one who had imparted the same information dozens of times. John had followed closely and, when he’d finished, asked, “Family?”

“No family. Pitts is covenentated—that means there’s an ancilla, so you’re responsible for her too. Moreso than the rest because they’re property of the Crown.”

So John had known. But he’d been expecting someone small and delicate and pretty—had been expecting a woman, in fact, which was ridiculous. He knew perfectly well that there were male omegas and, given their propensity to breed true, they were likely to be highly valued. Brother Bathsheba was neither small nor delicate. He was tall and strong and lithe as a panther, all feral grace and coiled strength. He had caught John completely off guard.

All through the rest of Mrs. Hudson’s tour he’d been distracted, thinking of that cool, assessing grey gaze. By the time they reached the second floor he could actually feel his heartbeat pick up.

“Yoo hoo!” Mrs. Hudson called, tapping at the door as she opened it. The ancillus was sitting in a chair by the window, bent demurely over his needlework. He had taken off his voluminous cloak, and John could see that he was in fact fairly slim, though it was the leanness of a dancer or an athlete. The weird monk-type habit he wore had a hood almost as big as the one on the cloak, so his face was still completely hidden.

“Door locked at night?” John asked Mrs. Hudson, bending to inspect the bolt.

“Oh yes. Mr. Phillips takes care of that. Very reliable, is Mr. Phillips.”

John moved to the window. “Lovely work,” he said, nodding at the little white bonnet Bathsheba was holding. “It’s a baby bonnet, isn’t it? Are we…”

“No,” the ancillus said without looking up. “It’s a gift. Commander Moriarty’s ancillus is nearing his confinement.”

His voice was unexpectedly deep. John turned away and bent to the windows. They were ridiculously secure: the brickwork would probably give way before the iron bars ever would.

“They’re quite sturdy,” Brother Bathsheba said unexpectedly from behind him. “You’d be better off checking the cellars.” When John glanced at him in surprise he added, “Nicholls was claustrophobic. Didn’t like going down there. Well, except in rut. The lock on the coal door’s been broken for ages.”

“How on earth could you know that?”

Brother Bathsheba lifted one shoulder, still not looking up. “Obvious.”

“Well,” Mrs. Hudson said, quickly. “We’ll leave you to it, Sheba dear. The female servants are upstairs, in the attics, of course, and the guards and footmen have their rooms in the mews over the garage…”

When John turned to shut the door the ancillus glanced up at him for the first time. In the sunlight from the window his eyes were blue and piercing as the desert sky. He looked straight at John and for a split second it felt to John he saw everything, every deception and secret thought John had ever had, and then he dropped his head to his work again and John closed the door.

He doesn’t know anything, John told himself for the hundredth time. He’s just watchful; who wouldn’t be in his position? And just because he’s Pitt’s handmaiden doesn’t mean he supports him, or reports to him…but the ancillus unsettled him. It was though he’d opened a golden cage expecting to find a canary and instead come face to face with a falcon.

The rest of the household had proved simple enough. Commander Pitts, John had already determined, was a classic bully type: kiss up and kick down. The deputy was far shrewder, but he had his own household and wouldn’t get in the way. Sholto had warned him at least one of the guards was probably an Eye, but that didn’t matter, since John was angling to become an informer himself and wouldn’t be doing anything worth reporting. Phillips and Mrs. Hudson were observant enough in their own fashion but wouldn’t be a problem, and the rest of the servants were sheep: just wanted to keep their heads down and survive. The only piece on the board he didn’t know how to play was the one he hadn’t considered at all. The handmaiden.

Next day Sherlock handed his little bonnet to Lady Smallwood and asked, “Will you check my whitework? It looks a bit uneven to me.”

He watched as she took it over to the window, ostensibly to have better light, but really to get far enough from the rest of the class that they wouldn’t notice her fingering the pattern, working out the message in the design. She came back over to his chair, smiling, but he could see a faint line between her eyebrows. “No, not a bit,” she said. “Not uneven at all.”

He understood her perfectly. _No._

John quickly realized that his official duties were not exactly onerous. He drove the Commander to New Scotland Yard each morning, checked the house and security logs, picked him up in the afternoon, sometimes took him out at night. The omega didn’t leave the house until late morning and usually just walked to church and back, accompanied by another ancilla. It was all rather boring.

John got into the habit of stopping at the Guardians barracks after he dropped Pitts off each morning. It gave him a chance to work out at the gym and hang around the canteen, keeping his ears open and picking up gossip. Besides, he could run into Sholto without attracting notice.

“I need to get some intel to give him, something that will make him want to make use of me,” he muttered to Sholto as they stood in the canteen, Sholto stirring saccharin into his tea.

Sholto nodded at an acquaintance, turning away from John and speaking so quietly John could barely hear. “There’s a sanctioned black market dealer who might be moving some _un_ sanctioned product. Let me get back to you.”

Two weeks after his heat the doctor came to call on Sherlock. The doctor was a new one, unfamiliar, but he found he liked her; her brisk professionalism was tempered with more kindness than most of the betas showed him.

After she’d checked to be sure he was entirely healed and sent him to urinate on a stick, Dr. Sawyer sat down in the chair, looked him in the eye, and said, “I’m afraid the heat was unsuccessful.”

Sherlock nodded, trying to look downcast.

“How many heats has it been?”

“This was my third.”

Dr. Sawyer nodded. She appeared to be thinking. Finally she said a bit tentatively, “Has your commander achieved a knot with you?”

Well, that was a novel question. “No.”

“And has anyone else?”

Oh God, what was the point of this? Sherlock clenched his teeth. “Yes.”

Dr. Sawyer nodded again. She was like a pigeon. “Were you sexually active before the Restoration?”

Sherlock eyed her narrowly, looking for a trap, didn’t see one. “Of course. I wasn’t a monk back _then_.”

“And who did you choose for partners?”

“Whomever I liked,” Sherlock said, trying not to bite down too hard on _I._

Dr. Sawyer did not look embarrassed. “I’ll be honest with you. There’s not a lot of data on this, but we’re beginning to think that if the first mating partner doesn’t achieve a knot, the heat is much more likely to fail. Some sort of biological defense mechanism to prevent children with an unwanted partner, perhaps.”

Or other omegas were also getting morning-after pills, Sherlock thought.

“The problem is, of course, that no commander is going to admit to failing, so the blame is going to fall on you. And I’m sure you’re aware that an omega who is unable to conceive…”

“What do you suggest?” Sherlock said bluntly. “I’ve already tried closing my eyes and thinking of England. It doesn’t make him more appealing.”

“I suggest that you arrange for someone else to go first,” Dr. Sawyer said very quietly. “Someone you _do_ find appealing. Many of the ancillae have done it, sometimes with the blessing of their commanders, some behind their backs. The housekeeper’s on your side, that’s clear, so she’d be willing to help you. Slip the guard captain up to your room before she notifies the commander that’s your heat’s come and there you are.”

Sherlock felt a flush rise in his cheeks. He had absolutely no intention of getting pregnant in any case, so there was no reason he would endanger himself by some sort of convoluted scheme to get Captain Watson or any other alpha to mate him a minute before he had to. Ever. Under no circumstances. _No._

Sherlock took a breath and lifted his chin, making his face entirely blank. “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord,” he said. “Be it done to me according to Thy will. I leave it in His hands.”

Dr. Sawyer nodded one last time. “Just think about it.”

John retuned from his afternoon rounds to find an unfamiliar car sitting behind the house. He came around and rapped on the window.

“Sorry, sir,” the driver said, rolling down the window and peering at him nervously. “Only I’ve brought the doctor to see to the ancillus, see? They told me to park around here.”

John frowned. “Is he ill?”

“Wouldn’t know about that, sir, I’m just the driver.”

John nodded. “Okay.” He started to turn away, but the driver said quickly, “Captain?”

“Yeah?”

“Bloke who lives here…they say he’s head of the Eyes.”

“He is, yes,” John said, looking at him curiously.

The man glanced around furtively. “So if I know something, someone maybe getting up to something they shouldn’t…I could tell it to you?”

John turned to lean in at the window, speaking low. “You could, but not here. I’ll meet you. Tell me when and where.”

John met Sholto next morning in a rarely-used loo at the Guardian barracks to ask him about the driver.

“We don’t have anyone in the Resistance in the secondaries’ health service,” Sholto told him. “If he gives you someone doing anything illegal, turn them in. We’re willing to burn the bloke in the black market too.”

John nodded. He had already realized that passing information to Pitts was an unpleasant, greasy task that left him feeling soiled and uncomfortable. Another guard captain had told him last week that his commander was abusing his handmaiden.

“They’re only supposed to have them during heat,” the man had said in a furtive whisper. “But I do the rounds at night and he tells me I have to leave her door unlocked. Then he goes in there and has his way with her and I hear her crying, it’s like to break my heart. She’s just a mite of a thing, just a girl, really.”

John had told Pitts but the commander, instead of reacting with the righteous indignation John expected, had seemed only mildly interested. He realized that Pitts had no intention of acting or notifying the Order; he was going to keep the information in secret, and use it as a weapon against the alpha at some point in the future. John had barely been able to meet the other captain’s eyes when he met him again.

Sometimes, lying on his perfectly made cot staring at the dull plaster ceiling, John wished he had remained in the prison camp. His life there had been hard and brutal and would likely have been short, but at least it had been honest.

The betas under John’s command were good lads for the most part, though they’d clearly got sloppy under the shoddy leadership of the former captain. John treated them as professionals who took pride in their work instead of underlings to be bullied, and they quickly began to behave accordingly; before long they were as crack an outfit as any he’d led in the field.

John liked to keep a close eye on things, though, so every few nights he took a sort of walkaround, checking the doors and windows and making certain the men on guard duty were alert and attentive. Sometime he stayed with the guards for an hour or so, getting to know them and passing the time. It wasn’t as though he missed the sleep. John hadn’t slept for two years.

This particular night was damp and unpleasant, so John took flasks of hot tea round but did not linger. Back inside he checked the ground floor and had just started climbing the stairs when he heard a faint sound from above: the soft snick of a door closing.

John instinctively froze, flattening himself against the wall. There came a second, softer click—a key turning in a lock, John thought—and then, as he strained his ears in the silence of the sleeping house, a faint rustling of someone moving down the corridor. A pale shape slipped across the landing and vanished up the stairs. It was so quiet that for a moment John thought he’d seen a ghost.

John blinked, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Of course it wasn’t a ghost; ghosts didn’t lock doors. It was the omega, whom John had never seen out of his heavy red habit. But what was the ancillus doing out of his…

The suspicion hit John with an almost physical jolt, making bile rise in his throat. Was this why Pitts had not acted on the information John had brought him, because he was doing the same thing? Telling Phillips to leave Bathsheba’s door unlocked so he could compel the ancillus to visit his rooms? John felt sick.

And yet. As the first wave of revulsion receded, John realized that he didn’t quite believe it. In the throes of heat was one thing, but John couldn’t picture tall, proud Brother Bathsheba giving in to the commander like that. Moreover, he couldn’t really picture Pitts demanding it. John had no doubt Pitts would take advantage of his ancillus for something he wanted, he just didn’t think that Pitts was interested enough in sex for its own sake to take the risk. And John had never found the door on the third floor unlocked on any of his rounds.

In that case, though: what _was_ Bathsheba doing? The second floor held only the commander’s rooms, his bedroom and study and library. Bathsheba must have been visiting one of them, but why? John remembered his earlier suspicion—that one time he’d seen Bathsheba’s penetrating stare—and felt a shiver of unease again. But that, too, felt wrong. If the ancillus was informing, he could go to Pitts any time he liked; no need to skulk around in the middle of the night. Besides, Pitt’s uninterrupted snores had been rolling down the corridor the entire time.

John considered. He would have been well within his rights to march upstairs and demand answers; some would say it was his duty. He didn’t. Instead he turned and went back down the stairs. Brother Bathsheba had so little; let him keep his secrets for now.

The grey/possibly-black marketer ran a chemist’s shop in a beta part of town that was sliding out of respectability at a precipitous rate. The man behind the till glanced up with disinterest as John entered, but then straightened so abruptly John heard his spine crack when he saw John’s uniform.

John made a show of strolling the aisles for a bit, inspecting the meagre offerings, before approaching the shopkeeper.

“Can I help you, sir?” the man said, trying for ingratiating but just coming off wheedling. “I don’t have everything out on the shelf, you know, don’t want to tempt those as might not have the means.”

John sniffed to show what he thought of the stock. “Could get that anywhere,” he said dismissively. “I came here because I heard you had things I _couldn’t_ get in my own neighbourhood.”

“Of course I do the occasional special order for our most loyal customers,” the man tried, but John shot him a look and he gave up immediately. “All right,” he said, voice dropping into a businesslike register. “Got some Dundee marmalade, just came in. Better than before the wars.”

John scoffed. “Right. I’ve seen that orange swill you lot pass off as marmalade. It’s not fit to catch flies.”

The beta looked genuinely insulted. “Angie!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Bring me a little jar of the Dundee and be quick about it.”

A minute later a thin, hunching girl appeared behind the man and handed over a tiny jar, the sort John remembered getting on airplanes and room service trays. John clocked the bruise on her cheek and the cowering posture, and his dislike of the man increased.

“There you are,” the man said, handing the jar to John. “Finest marmalade you’ll find at any price.”

John inspected the contents through the glass. To his surprise the marmalade looked genuine enough, down to the translucent wisps of peel. He wondered where it had come from.

“On the house,” the man said, evidently mistaking John’s silence for doubt. “You try that and just see if you aren’t back here for more.”

John pocketed the little jar, thinking for some reason, of Brother Bathsheba: omegas loved sweets, didn’t they? Maybe he could use this as an in, find out what the ancillus had been doing snooping around…still, he hadn’t come here to collect treats. “All right. But I’m not here for marmalade. I heard you had something special.”

“Got a bit of whisky,” the man said cautiously. “But it’s spoken for, like.”

John waited, impassive.

The man sighed. “All right.” He leaned across the counter and John took the hint and leaned in as well. “I got some stuff for pain. Beta health service doesn’t provide anything anymore, not the good stuff, and what you can get other places ain’t enough for some. It’ll cost, though, I’m not giving samples out of that.”

John frowned. He knew as well as anyone that there was a significant shortage of all pharmaceuticals, and the Empire’s ongoing efforts in Afghanistan had decimated the illegal opium trade; he’d been a part of those efforts himself. But morphine was already available on the black market, albeit at a steep price. The beta seemed to be saying he had something else. “Show me.”

The man hesitated and then stepped through the door—no calling Angie this time. He came back holding a white plastic bottle down by his waist, as though to hide it from passersby outside. He held it up to show John, keeping his palm cupped around it.

John looked at the label: carfentanyl. He felt his eyebrows shoot up. One of the only things he’d found to support in the Restoration had been the NeoTories’ crackdown on illicit drugs, and carfentanyl had been illegal for years; it had been a scourge back in the days before drug dealers had been routinely executed as a matter of course. “Where’d you get that?”

“Ah, can’t tell you that, sir.”

John bit down on his anger. He wasn’t here to kick arse, he was here to get information he could pass to Pitts. _Carfentanyl!_ Nobody was buying this for a toothache, they were buying it for an escape from the unrelenting misery that was beta existence in London these days. While John did not exactly blame them, as a doctor—well, a former doctor—he would be damned if he’d just stand by and watch more lives be thrown away. He breathed slowly out his nose, pushing the fury down.

“How much?”

The man palmed the bottle, slid it back in his pocket. “Gold only. Or silver, but this will take a lot of silver.”

John nodded. “All right. I’ll be back.”

John met the health service driver at a rundown pub in a neighborhood even less propitious than the one he had just left. The beer was good enough, though, and he took a long pull; it had been a long time since he’d had a proper pint. He bought one for the driver as well, who looked as though he hadn’t had a pint—or possibly a full meal—since the old Queen died. “Ta,” the driver said, taking a careful, savoring sip.

John set down his glass. “So. What’s your story then?”

The man set his glass down quickly as well, as though John had given him an order. “I was a writer before, mysteries. You might have read one if you went in for that sort of thing—I wasn’t famous or anything, but I did well enough. I didn’t realize what I was writing was immoral back then. The Crown was merciful enough to send me to a reeducation camp, since I was too old to be a soldier, so I was able to find work when I got out and provide for my family. Work fit for my station, of course.”

“I meant what you wanted me to pass on to the Eyes,” John said as patiently as he could. He wanted to be sympathetic, but the man’s cringing servility irritated him as much as the chemist’s venality had done.

The man ducked his head. “Sorry, sir. I drive the doctors for the secondaries’ health service and, well, you hear things, from the other drivers, sometimes the doctors and nurses talking, you know. And I’ve heard there’s a doctor that’s known among the omegas, especially the Bondeds, that he gets things for them.” He lowered his voice even further. “Illegal things. I can tell you his name.”

“What sort of things?”

“Medications. I heard for a price he can get morning after pills, even. So they don’t get pregnant,” he added, in case John didn’t understand him.

That was definitely illegal, and though John wouldn’t put it in the same category as carfentanyl, he suspected the NeoTories might feel differently. “Where does he get them?” Contraceptives had been banned in England for years.

“He’s got a contact in the Foreign Office who brings them back from abroad, so I heard, anyway.”

“And he sells them to the Bondeds?”

“Right. I hear he can get sedatives too, omega’s little helper they call them. Gives them to the ancillae for free.”

“Can you blame them?” John said mildly. “You know what happens to them.”

The man’s voice hardened. “What, once every three months? Live in the lap of luxury the rest of the time, don’t they?”

John shrugged. “Sure, but does that make up for being banged by every alpha in scenting distance for a days on end?”

“And what do you think happens to the girls round here?” The man was still smiling, but his face had begun to twist at the edges, like a mask melting. ”Girls with no dad to pay the rent and keep food on the table, because dad’s been sent away for writing stories? How many men do you think they have to go with, every day, every night? And no clotted cream and sugar for their tea in between, you can be sure.”

“Christ,” John said, low. “Christ. I’m sorry, mate. I haven’t been back here long—“

“Please forgive me for speaking out of turn,” the driver said. His smile was impossibly wide now, showing all his teeth, as though this would somehow nullify the tears in his eyes. “I thank God every day for the restoration of our glorious Empire.”

“Jesus, stop. I’m not going to turn you in! Where’s your girl now?”

“We don’t know.” The man looked down, blinking. “It’s against the law, a sin. She’s a fallen woman. We pray for her soul.”

“I’m sorry,” John said again.

The man nodded without looking up and took another sip of his beer. John took the hint and they drank in silence for a few minutes.

“I’ve got a younger one,” the man said very quietly. “A younger daughter. I’ll do anything to keep her safe. That’s why I’m here.”

John nodded in turn. He hadn’t known there were girls on the street—there weren’t supposed to be any; like the grey market, prostitution was supposed to be confined to the brothels—but even from the safety of the commander’s car he’d seen the gaunt children in the beta neighborhoods.

“I don’t think we’ll go after your doctor,” John said. He hadn’t any intention of passing that on to Pitts. “Small beer, and he’s probably paying someone off. But if you could find out anything about the source…”

“I’ll keep my ears open,” the driver said tiredly.

“It’ll go in your file, that you helped us. Should help get that blot off your name.”

The man looked up hopefully. “Will it up my ration status? Traitors’ households get less, and this winter’s been a rough one.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” John promised. A thought struck him and he fished in his pocket to bring out the miniature jar of jam. “Here. For your little girl.”

John half expected him to sneer, but the man’s eyes went wide with astonishment before the ghost of a real smile flitted across his face. “Marmalade! Look at that. I’ll wager she doesn’t even remember the taste.”

“Not sure I do either.”

The man smiled again but it was the fake, guarded one now. “Thank you, sir.”

“John.”

The smile did not shift. “Sir.”

Stepping outside and turning his collar up against the thin drizzle, John looked up at the smoky darkness and thought of the clear bright stars in Afghanistan. He tried to remember the rest of it: the cold showers, short rations, sadistic guards, but in spite of everything wished once again that he was back there.


	9. Chapter 9

Sherlock, buried deep in his yachting book, heard the bells late in the evening. It might not be Henry, he thought—at least two Bondeds were also due—but he listened anyway, waiting for the toll that followed the distinctive joyful chiming of a secondary birth. One, two, three, four, _five._ That was spectacular even by omega standards. Males, with their larger frames, were able to carry larger litters to term; another reason they were so valuable. He wondered if higher-order multiples were more likely in an induced heat and if Molly would regard this as further evidence, and then he put the whole thing out of his mind and returned to his book.

Sure enough, at church the next day it was announced that Commander Moriarty was the proud father of quintuplets, two boys and three girls. The decorative needlework class was abuzz with the news.

“What fantastic luck,” Sister Leah said enviously. Her own belly was barely rounded though she was several months along now; she’d be lucky to have twins. “An heir and a spare and three to share; they’ll all be secondaries as he’s male.”

“He won’t be going to Ireland after that,” another said. “Not unless the new Taosaich needs an ancillus.”

“Won’t his commander want to keep him? I heard it was a honeymoon heat so he knows they’re compatible…who is he anyway? Moriarty?”

“I know who he is,” one of the new ancillae piped up. She was called Margaret of York, a self-absorbed, narcissistic teenager who complained constantly about how boring needlework was and how she couldn’t wait to be bonded so she could wear pretty clothes again. “He’s _my_ commander’s boss. He’s the Foreign Minister, so he’s abroad a lot, but he’s home right now. He was sitting next to mine at church Sunday. Colonel Moran’s his right hand man, you know; he used to be part of Commander Moriarty’s household until he got me as a reward for Ireland. Commander Moriarty’s a bit older, but he’s not bad looking.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes inside his hood. Everyone knew that Colonel Moran was the hero of Ireland, an honorific he’d received for brutally suppressing the Irish rebellion. He was a brute of a man, a small-eyed, broad-shouldered thug in a uniform. Sherlock hadn’t looked at Moriarty, though somehow he always knew when Moriarty made one of his infrequent appearances in London; he seemed to feel the man’s eyes crawling over him no matter how far he withdrew into his hood.

_Sarah House_

_Then_

Sherlock had been finishing breakfast next to Molly in the convent refectory when one of the senior abbesses had rapped smartly on the lectern and said, “Sisters and brothers. I am pleased to inform you that his Majesty the King has decreed that the first covenants will take place a fortnight from now. Twenty of the most illustrious unbonded alphas of the realm will be taking some of you into their households to fulfill an omega’s highest destiny. For this first, specially chosen group, the ceremony will take place at Westminster Abbey and King Charles himself will be in attendance.”

There was a rustle, half of the omegas whispering excitedly whilst the other half sat in stony silence.

“I have been informed that a delegation from the Cabinet will be coming today to inspect our proceedings here and to meet those omegas fortunate enough to be chosen for the first covenanting. If I call your name, you will go with Abbess Hester. The rest of you will proceed to instruction as usual. Sister Mary the Virgin.”

Molly flicked a glance at Sherlock and got up. Sherlock was not surprised to hear his own name called a few minutes later; while his enthusiasm for the job was nonexistent, male omegas were a precious enough resource that he and Henry were almost certain to be in the first batch. Except…

“Brother Hosea,” the abbess said. After a moment, “Brother Hosea?”

Molly and Sherlock exchanged another glance and finally one of the other abbesses said, “He’s in the cells, Abbess.” It was the euphemism for being in heat.

The abbess scowled as though Henry had gone into heat just to inconvenience her and conferred in a whisper with Abbess Hester. Sherlock watched this with morbid interest: the only other male in the order was Brother Phillip, who—though impeccably pedigreed—was astonishingly homely. After a moment the abbess announced, “Sister Charlotte”.

“They’re picking the pretty ones, they’re going to parade us like cattle,” Molly hissed to Sherlock.

“Mmm, rather like horses, I think.”

“D’you think they’ll make us strip? Are they going to touch us? If one of them touches me I’m going to spit in his bloody face.”

“Don’t,” Sherlock said in an urgent undertone. “I feel the same, but don’t. Do you think that will shame them? Hardly. They’ll think you’re a rebel and some of them will find that exciting. Do you want to attract the sort of alpha who sees you as a colt to be broken?”

Molly went white and then red, as though she might be sick. Sherlock went on quickly, “Look for the stupid ones. Smile at them. Bat your eyelashes. We can’t get out of this, so we might as well get ones we can manage.”

Molly took a shaky breath and then blew it out with determination. “Right.”

They were sent to bathe and wash their hair, a treat; usually they were allowed only to wash only on Saturdays. Sherlock was even allowed to shave under the watchful stare of two guards. He was especially grateful for this. His beard grew more slowly than an alpha’s, but that just meant he spent most of his time in a state of permanent itchiness.

When he was finished he dressed in clean robes and then, for the first time, donned the long crimson cape with its deep hood. Filing into a large empty room to join the women he was momentarily disoriented by the sight of them in their stiff headdresses, indistinguishable, but then he caught Molly’s bright brown eyes.

Abbess Hester arranged them, placing Sherlock between two of the taller women—to make them look shorter, presumably—and then they all stood silent and unmoving, hand clasped under their cloaks, waiting. And waiting. Sherlock thought he was well versed in all the convent’s various flavours of boredom, but standing stock still in a stuffy room in a heavy cloak was rapidly becoming a new low.

Finally there came the sound of voices and footsteps along the corridor, growing louder, and then the door opened and a small knot of people came in led by the Mother Superior.

Sherlock watched them covertly: the hood gave excellent cover. Three standard issue NeoTory politico types. One had put aside a beta wife, one had never married, and the third—oh, that was interesting, the third was bent, had lusted after alphas all his life but only covertly, living deep in the closet. A fourth man, younger, never bonded but preferred omegas—a sadist, don’t react, Molly, don’t—laughing with a female alpha Sherlock couldn’t read at all. They all gradually quieted as they came in, taking in the line of twenty omegas standing silent and submissive before them.

“Commanders, may I present our first group of handmaidens,” the Mother Superior said grandly. “Sister Eglantyne, if you would step forward?”

Eglantyne was a true believer, one of the few who had joined the order of her own volition. She stepped forward eagerly, though with her head still bowed in ostentatious meekness.

“Do you look forward to your covenanting, Sister?” the Mother Superior asked.

“With all my heart, Reverend Mother,” Eglantyne said a bit breathlessly. “I pray for the day the Lord gives me to an alpha to fill and fulfill me, to grant the dearest wish of my heart: to bring England glory and honor through the birth of my children.”

Sherlock bit down the urge to gag.

“Good girl,” one of the stuffed shirts said approvingly. “Er, Reverend Mother, do you think we might have those bonnets off? Can’t see a thing under all that. We’re going to be spending quite a bit of time with these girls, want to see what we’re signing up for, what?”

“Quite so, quite so,” one of the others said.

The Mother Superior hesitated and Sherlock, feeling the tightness of his jaw, thought of the sadistic gleam in the younger alpha’s eye and deliberately smoothed his face.

“Very well,” the Reverend Mother said finally. “Sisters and brother, hood and wings off, if you please.”

Sherlock pulled off his cloak, folded it neatly, and set it in front of him on the ground. He heard the others following suit and knew they all shared the same thought: at least the pile of clothes might keep the alphas from coming too close.

“Ah, that’s better!” It was the bent commander, too loud and too jolly. He moved forward and the others followed, spreading out along the line to inspect the omegas. Sherlock kept his eyes down but he sensed the man stopping in front of him and he read his thoughts easily: perhaps it would be easier to fake it with a male omega, someone closer in appearance to an alpha. Sherlock had a cock, after all, just as female alphas had breasts; physically they were indistinguishable from their beta counterparts except during heat or rut. “Now here’s a fine-looking specimen. 1-A, is it? Good breeding then?”

“A very old secondary family,” Abbess Hester murmured discreetly.

“Good show, good show.”

Sherlock kept his eyes modestly downcast so he wouldn’t roll them. What was with these prigs and their repeating every inane utterance?

“Jolly good, jolly good,” the commander said heartily and moved off down the line. Sherlock breathed out. A muscle under his eye was beginning to twitch, but at least he felt cooler without the cloak.

“Reverend Mother,” came a new, drawling voice, and Sherlock somehow knew without looking that it came from the younger alpha. “Can’t we get these caps off as well? They all look alike like this.”

“Our handmaidens cover their heads out of modesty, commander, and to show their devotion to the holy Church.” The Reverend Mother sounded affronted, which, perversely, made Sherlock want to shove off his own head covering.

“Oh, come now,” the one who had demanded the headdresses off in the first place said a bit impatiently. “If we’re to breed them, need to see what we’re getting, eh? Let’s not stand on ceremony.”

Out of the corner of his eye Sherlock saw the female alpha lean in and whisper something to the younger one, who tittered.

The Mother Superior hesitated again but it was evident to everyone who had the upper hand. “You may remove your caps,” she said tightly.

Sherlock pushed his cowl back, feeling oddly exposed as his curls sprang free. He was aware of a faint rush of sweetness, like a breeze through lilacs: the scent of nineteen women shaking out their freshly washed hair.

“Oh my,” came a low, breathy voice. “You _are_ a sight, aren’t you? Look at those cheekbones.”

Sherlock looked down at the female alpha. She was grinning at him, a knowing smile that should have been humiliating and infuriating but somehow wasn’t; it was as though they shared a secret. He stared as she tilted her head to look him openly up and down: hair and makeup perfect, black uniform immaculate down to the mirror gloss on her high boots, that sparkle in her eyes. Her interest was lascivious and open, but he could read nothing of what lay behind it. She was completely opaque to him.

The commander made a regretful face, lifting a hand as though to caress his cheek, but not quite touching him. “Not my type, I’m afraid. Pity. We would have made beautiful babies.”

She moved along, pausing to admire Sister Charlotte’s waterfall of pale golden hair. Sherlock stared after her, feeling a strange pang of regret. She was _interesting_ , and when was the last time anyone had been that? And although Sherlock had no intention of bearing children the female commander was, objectively, correct. With their matching coloring and high cheekbones they would have had beautiful children.

“Bor-ing,” the younger commander singsonged to the female as he passed her. It made Sherlock look up, and their eyes met. Sherlock had never seen the man before but the man’s eyes sparked with what seemed like recognition.

“What have we here?” he drawled. Sherlock immediately dropped his gaze but too late; the alpha moved in like a tiger spotting prey. He stopped so close Sherlock could feel his breath on his cheek. Even with his gaze lowered Sherlock could feel his eyes crawling all over his body, like ants. “Oh yessssss,” the man breathed, low. “I remember you. I thought you’d gone. Didn’t know you were so pretty.”

Sherlock held absolutely still, not allowing even his eyelids to flicker, though every fiber in his being was screaming _run._ What was he talking about? Sherlock never forgot a face, and he was entirely certain he had never seen this man in his life.

“Oh, we’re going to have so much fun together.” He leaned in closer so his lips brushed Sherlock’s ear. “Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock’s eyes snapped up, astonished, and for a split second he was looking directly into the alpha’s gleeful dark eyes.

“Commander Moriarty, if you please,” Abbess Hester said crisply.

Moriarty stepped back, grinning. “Just checking the merchandise. How much is it?” He took Sherlock’s ear below the tag, pinching just a hairsbreadth harder than necessary. “Oh, 1-A. Very nice. Dibs!”

“I saw him first,” the female said lazily, not looking over.

Moriarty grinned at him again and Sherlock kept his face immobile as those fingers dug into his ear. He felt one of Moriarty’s nails pierce the skin, on the back of his ear where the mark would not show, and did not let himself flinch. 

Finally Moriarty let go. “What do you call it?”

“I beg your pardon?” Abbess Hester said, sounding affronted.

Out of the corner of his eye Sherlock saw the Mother Superior appear at her side. “Is there a problem, Abbess Hester?”

Commander Moriarty looked over. “Just asking his name.”

“This is Brother Benedict.”

Moriarty made a face of exaggerated disgust. “ _Benedict?_ Please. That’s not a name for something like this. This is an omega an alpha would send an army into battle for, would sacrifice anyone who stood in his way of having him.” His eyes were crawling over Sherlock’s face again and Sherlock, pinned, found himself unable to look away. Moriarty’s voice abruptly sharpened. “Change it. I’ll call him Bathsheba.”

“Commander—“

“I said change it.” Moriarty’s voice was soft but it cracked like a whip. Sherlock saw the Mother Superior flinch.

“Very well,” she said. Her voice scratched over the words.

Moriarty smiled, a wide guileless smile that was somehow more frightening than his glare, and finally he stepped back. “I’ll see you soon,” he said almost casually to Sherlock, and strolled over to join the female.

The other NeoTories did not bother with Sherlock at all, clearly preferring the supposedly more docile females, so Sherlock spent the remainder of the inspection standing still and silent, hands folded and eyes down, nausea and confusion churning in his gut.

_London_

_Now_

On Friday morning Sherlock had just finished dressing and was looking out the window, half wondering if the rain would prevent him going to the park that afternoon and half musing over a new file on the persistent unrest in Scotland that he’d found in the commander’s desk the night before, when he heard the light clatter of footsteps. Tilly, he thought, and was pleased to find himself right when she appeared in the door. “You’ve a visitor.”

“A visitor?” Sherlock said blankly. How on earth could he have a visitor? “Who is it?”

Tilly shrugged. “Dunno. Mrs. Hudson said to fetch you down to the parlor.”

“All right.” Sherlock pulled on his cloak, brain ticking over madly: any number of things he could be in trouble over, but surely the commander would prefer to handle such things himself, in private? Ancillae made social calls only under certain circumstances and always in groups; Bondeds had more freedom, but no Bonded would come to call without prior arrangement, and certainly not right before the noonday prayer service.

Downstairs Tilly banged the parlor door open in her usual careless matter and said, “Brother Bathsheba, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Tilly,” Mrs. Hudson said. She was standing in the parlor, as was the new guard captain, and over by the window stood the last person Sherlock had ever expected to see again. “Would you like a cup of tea, Inspector?”

“No, thank you,” DI Lestrade said. He was staring at Sherlock in his red habit as though he’d never seen an ancillus before and Sherlock was staring right back, too surprised to lower his head. “Brother, er. Bathsheba? You’re looking, ah.”

“And you, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock said, finding his voice in a sudden wave of unexpected anger. “You’re looking very well yourself. Chief Inspector now, is it? Of the secondaries service? I’m sure it helped to have all the beta and omega competition out of the way. And then you had to chuck your wife, but that was no great sacrifice; that marriage had been over for years, obvious to anyone with eyes. Got your own little handmaiden yet?”

“No, I don’t,” Lestrade said calmly, though the skin around his eyes had tightened. “And it was my wife’s idea to leave.”

“Yes. Well.” Sherlock felt wrong-footed by Lestrade’s refusal to counterattack. “I don’t suppose you’ve come to catch up on old times, so what _are_ you doing here?”

“I’ve got a case,” Lestrade said as though it were obvious.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, though the effect was undoubtedly lost under his enormous hood. “And you’re at a loss, of course, what else is new, but you must have sunk to truly appalling depths if you’ve become delusional enough to think that I would be able to help you. I’ve taken up decorative needlework these days, would you like to see my sampler?”

“No. listen, I do need you, and I’ve got permission from Pitts,” Lestrade said earnestly. “There’s a dead omega and it’s almost certainly suicide, but the alpha won’t believe it, and…well, it’s complicated. “

Sherlock stared at him. “Say that again.”

“There was an ancillus found this morning—“

“Not that, the bit about Commander Pitts.”

“Oh. Yeah. The omega’s commander is insisting it can’t possibly be suicide and demanding that we bring someone from the outside, expert opinion, that sort of thing. Wanted to know who I’d want looking at it if it were my household. And I mentioned you, but said you were unavailable, obviously, but he insisted on my ringing Pitts. From what I hear he and Pitts are enemies and I think, er…”

“Pitts wants to embarrass him.”

“Yeah.” Lestrade scratched his ear. “So he said okay, as long as your guard captain comes along and we keep it quiet.”

Tilly appeared with a tea tray and Sherlock sat down automatically, thinking hard. That Pitts had plenty of enemies was perfectly plausible; even if he hadn’t been a miserable grease stain of a human being he was head of the secret police, which ensured being feared but not liked. He was also coarse, ill-mannered, and entirely deaf to social niceties; the potential scandal of allowing an omega of his household to run about London solving crimes would weigh little with him next to a chance of embarrassing an opponent. Pitts was already used to making use of Sherlock in his power games, as a plum to reward the favored; it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to imagine him using Sherlock as a weapon if the opportunity presented itself. Incredible as it appeared, it seemed Lestrade really had brought him a case.

Sherlock looked up at where Lestrade was still standing awkwardly, clutching his hat. “Very well, I’ll take it. Sit. Get some tea and enjoy the sugar and tell me everything.”

Lestrade perched on the edge of a chair and took the cup Mrs. Hudson poured him, nodding his thanks. “All right. Ancillus found dead this morning in the bathtub, both wrists cut—“

“With what?”

“Kitchen knife.”

Sherlock frowned but then, unexpectedly, Captain Watson spoke up. “Who was in charge of keeping the knives secure?”

Everyone looked at him and Watson flushed slightly before continuing, “They should have a protocol for such things. We do here, don’t we, Mrs. Hudson?’

“We certainly do,” Mrs. Hudson said firmly.

“Ah,” Lestrade said, looking discomfited. “Well. Didn’t look into that yet. Anyway, as I was saying, by all appearances he’d been dead since the night before—“

“He?” Sherlock interrupted again. _He._ Lestrade had said ancillus twice, but he hadn’t paid attention. There was a rushing in his ears, loud enough he could barely hear his own voice, so he repeated it: “He?”

“Er, yeah,” Lestrade said, glancing down at his notes. “Brother, erm, Hosea. He was the ancillus of…”

“Commander Moriarty,” Sherlock said. His hands had gone cold and he set down his tea.

“Moriarty,” Watson said, looking at Sherlock. “You were making a bonnet the first day I came. For Commander Moriarty’s handmaiden. He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

Lestrade raised his eyebrows and Sherlock shook his head automatically. He didn’t have friends, not really; Henry had been Molly’s friend.

“I knew him,” he said in a clipped tone. “Irrelevant, it’s not exactly a large community. So you assume he cut his wrists in the bath last night. I suppose the body’s been moved already—“

“But it hasn’t,” Lestrade said. “Once I knew I’d be coming to you I told them to leave everything just as it was.”

“Then let’s go,” Sherlock said, dropping his cup and leaping to his feet with alacrity. “You can tell me the rest in the car.”

Lestrade looked regretfully at his tea but Watson said, “Hold on. Anyplace you go you go with me, and that means I drive.”

Sherlock, forgetting himself completely, glared at him, but Watson simply crossed his arms and stood firm. “That’s completely unnecessary,” Sherlock said crossly. “Lestrade—“

“Sh—let it go, he’s right,” Lestrade said. “Of course he has to go with you, Pitts would never have allowed this otherwise.”

“Fine. Then you’ll ride with us. You have a driver?”

“My DS can bring my car.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Donovan?”

Lestrade shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “Donovan’s got promoted.”

So Donovan was an alpha. In the old days it hadn’t mattered and most people couldn’t tell the difference; even Sherlock rarely bothered to deduce. He wondered briefly what had become of Anderson—clearly a beta if ever there was one—and then decided he didn’t care. He was just glad he wouldn’t have to deal with Donovan seeing him in this getup.

“I’ll bring the car around,” Watson said. He dipped his chin in the direction of Lestrade’s teacup and said, “Go ahead and finish that, might take a minute.”

Not completely unobservant, Sherlock noted.

“I’ll just go and tell Phillips to let Sister Mary know you won’t be going to church,” Mrs. Hudson said and slipped out after him.

Left alone, Sherlock and Lestrade looked at each other for a brief moment before Lestrade said, “I’m sorry. About all this. I thought you’d got out, but then I heard through the grapevine about you being here a while back. I know Pitts from back at the Met; he’s…”

“A moron.”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“I’m sorry about your wife,” Sherlock said. “No children, I assume.”

“You mean you know. No, no children. I know you don’t think much of my eyes, but even I could see that would have been a bad idea.”

Sherlock quirked a half smile and then Phillips put his head round the door and said, “The car is ready.”

“Tell me from the beginning,” Sherlock said when Watson had started the car.

“Okay,” Lestrade pulled out a small notebook and consulted it. “Alison Murdoch, maid, beta, went to Brother Hosea’s room with a breakfast tray and saw the bed hadn’t been slept in. She called his name, no answer, went to fetch the housekeeper. Kitty Reilly, beta, unmarried, but you lot call them missus anyway, yeah? She went to the room and checked the bathroom, found the body in the bath, wrists cut, water cold. Housekeeper gave us most of our information. It seems Brother Hosea had a litter last week and had just been cleared to get out of bed and bathe yesterday, so he was looking forward to a hot bath. Mrs. Reilly took him a cup of hot milk last night and he was still in the bath, told her to leave it. She locked up and didn’t return until morning.”

“Where was the milk?”

“Cup was in the bathroom. It was empty, little bit of dried skim in it, you know, as though it had been drunk last night.”

“And Commander Moriarty?”

“Apparently he’d been home after the birth but left the country again two days ago. Travels a lot; he’s the foreign minister. The housekeeper’d rung him and I spoke to him on the phone whilst I was there; he says he’s coming back straight away. Seemed quite upset. He’s very insistent Brother Hosea couldn’t have committed suicide and there must have been foul play of some sort, which is where you come in.”

Of course. “You said Brother Hosea had been cleared to get out of bed? Had he seen the midwife or the doctor, some sort of postpartum check?”

“Right, that’s what the housekeeper said.”

“Anything about postpartum depression or anything of that sort?”

“According to the housekeeper, he’d been moody and weepy ever since the birth. That’s why the doctor came instead of the midwife. Said it was common to have a bit of a low spell after delivering a large litter, some sort of hormone thing; gave the housekeeper some tranquilizers to smooth him out a bit.”

Sherlock considered as the car hummed along. “And what did Commander Moriarty say?”

“Now he tells a different story. Said Brother Hosea was in good spirits. The night before Moriarty’d left town, he’d met with Hosea and told him that he’d decided to request permission to bond. Sounds like that hadn’t been the plan before, but once Hosea’d given him five healthy secondary babies, he must have decided a bird in the hand, etcetera. Moriarty claims Brother Hosea was over the moon. Moriarty even went so far as to call his parents and ask for his hand before he made his formal request to the Crown to release him from the order.”

“I imagine _they_ were over the moon at least,” Sherlock said drily.

“Well, they certainly aren’t now. Commander Moriarty asked me to take care of notifying them so I had an officer from the local constabulary go round; said they were in pieces.”

Sherlock looked out the window, thinking hard. Henry had never given any indication that he had any desire to stay with Moriarty—rather the opposite—but had the babies changed his mind? He also didn’t seem the sort to become emotional and tearful, but Sherlock had no firsthand experience of childbirth or its aftermath; he couldn’t discount the possibility out of hand.

“I know I asked this before,” Watson said from the front seat—Sherlock had almost forgotten he was listening. “But how did Brother Hosea get hold of a knife? You said his room was locked?”

“The housekeeper has charge of the keys. She said she locked him in after she brought the milk, and then checked the rest of the house before she went to bed himself. He must have got the knife before, somehow.”

That actually was a good point, Sherlock thought, and then the car pulled to a stop before and Lestrade said “Here we are.”

Watson opened the doors and Lestrade said, “Hold on a sec,” ducking back to speak to the man driving what was apparently his car. The man nodded and drove off.

“I’ve sent my DS off to track down the doctor,” Lestrade explained, rejoining them.

Sherlock nodded and turned back toward the house, waiting as Lestrade rang the doorbell. Somewhat to his annoyance, Watson returned from parking the car just as the door opened; apparently he was taking his mandate to tag along literally.

The maid who opened the door was small and drab and so obviously devoid of any initiative that Sherlock dismissed her immediately; she was nothing. Far more interesting was the woman standing behind her in a black housekeeper’s dress, because the housekeeper believed herself to be clever. Sherlock slanted his gaze at her from under his hood and saw the woman eyeing him back in what appeared to be disbelieving scorn. A former journalist, Sherlock deduced; not a real journalist but a hack for some second-rate gossip rag, right-leaning enough that she’d been spared reeducation. He remembered what Henry had said about Mrs. Reilly. He looked her over, from her sly eyes to her clothing to her hands to her shoes, and knew he had all the pieces to the puzzle before he even stepped into the house.

“Mrs. Reilly,” Lestrade said, stepping into the foyer. “I’ve brought the consultant I mentioned. Sh—er, do you want to go up?”

“In just a moment,” Sherlock said. “Mrs. Reilly, tell me about the household first, if you’d be so kind.”

Mrs. Reilly glanced at Lestrade and, when he simply looked patiently back at her, huffed an annoyed sigh. “The commander, of course. Me. The maids—Alison’s right there, Bridget’s gone to the shops to prepare for the commander’s return. The guards stay in a flat over the garage.”

No mention of Henry. “And the children?”

“Still in hospital,” Mrs. Reilly said indifferently. “Once they’ve grown big enough to leave they’ll go to the country, no reason for them to be here. There’s an agency managing the nannies and so on.”

“No butler? No cook?”

“No. The commander told me as much when I got hired. It didn’t make sense to keep a large staff in town, not with him away most of the time.”

An arrangement which doubtless suited Kitty Reilly, as it left her with no checks on her power. “And when did Brother Hosea return from hospital?”

“Thursday last—a bit over a week ago.”

“And how did he seem?’

Mrs. Reilly shrugged. “Lay about in bed all day—nothing unusual there, though, and he’d been told he had to rest. Bit mopey, but I hadn’t time to bother with that, I had my work to do. Commander was worried about him, I do know that. He as much said it’s why he proposed marriage, and when that didn’t cheer him up he asked the doctor to come round.”

“Ah yes, the doctor. Tell me about that.”

Mrs. Reilly sighed again, making her displeasure at retelling her story as blatant as possible. “I’ve already told the Inspector. He said it was time Brother Hosea got out of bed, that he should bathe and get dressed, and he gave me some pills for his nerves. The doctor even said he could have a drop of spirits if he’d a mind, just for the moment, you understand. Well, that cheered him up. It was late afternoon when the doctor left so he had to wait to have his bath until after dinner, but directly we’d done the washing up Alison went to draw it.”

“One moment,” Sherlock said. “Did he take any of the tranquilizers yesterday?’

“Yes, I gave him one with his tea.”

“Very well. Go on.”

“I came up to help but he said he was fine getting in the bath on his own, so I went back down to make some hot milk with a bit of brandy, as he wanted. When I came back he was in the bath and said to leave the milk on the little table. I came back and called through the door, but he said he wanted to stay in the bath a bit longer and he’d see himself to bed. So I locked up and went to bed.” Mrs. Reilly looked down, clearly trying to look sorrowful. “It was the last time I ever spoke to him.”

“Mmmm,” Sherlock said, watching her narrowly. “I should like to see the kitchens now, if you please.”

“The _kitchen?”_ Lestrade echoed.

“That’s where the knives will be kept,” Sherlock said, smiling. “Correct, Captain Watson?”

Walking through the house was a strange experience. Moriarty had clearly had the place professionally decorated, and equally clearly spent almost no time living there. Unlike most of the other residences of the new NeoTory establishment Sherlock had visited, evidence of the previous owners’ modernist remodeling could still easily be seen: the pseudoVictorian furnishings sat, ill-at-ease, on top of the open spaces and Deco fireplaces, like a transparent scrim through which a previous life could still be glimpsed.

The kitchen was in the basement. It was smaller than Commander Pitts’ and felt vaguely unused, though like the rest of the house the ghost of a lost presence could still be felt: a high quality range, a scarred butcher-block island. A serious cook had once lived here.

“Who does the cooking?” Sherlock asked.

“Bridget mostly, though we take it turns sometimes. There’s only the four of us—well, three now. The men do for themselves and even when the commander’s in town he usually only has breakfast here.”

“Knives?”

Mrs. Reilly took a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked a cupboard, swinging both doors open wide. A knife block sat on the bottom shelf, with a clutter of cleaning supplies, some mousetraps, and a small bottle of pills on the shelf above.

“Who has the keys besides you?”

“The guard captain has a master set, and the commander does as well. I doubt they ever come in here though.”

Sherlock tipped his head inquiringly at Captain Watson, who nodded. “Cook has charge of the kitchen keys at our place, but Mrs. Hudson has a set and so do I. Cook has charge of the locking up at night and I double check on occasion. Would you say this cabinet is always locked?’

“At night, but during the day…I couldn’t swear to it, no. We often leave it unlocked during the day, if the maids are cleaning, for example.”

Sherlock reached out with one red-gloved hand and picked up the pill bottle, which had a handwritten label: _Take up to four times a day as needed._ “These are from yesterday?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock opened the bottle: omega’s little helpers, just as he’d suspected. Half a tablet, as he knew from experience, was sufficient to take the edge off; a whole left the taker dreamy and uncaring. If, as he strongly suspected, Henry had been given two or more, he’d have been in no position to put up a struggle.

Sherlock replaced the bottle and moved closer to inspect the knife block. The knives had clearly belonged to the previous owners: they were excellent quality, different types bought for specific purposes instead of a set. Most were dusty and unused except the paring knife, which was dull and nicked. Bridget was not much of a cook. There were three empty slots but the knife used to slash Henry’s wrists hadn’t come from any of those; they’d never been used. Sherlock grinned into the cupboard, knowing the hood blocked his face from view. Captain Watson had been on to something after all.

“Let’s go up,” he said, closing the cupboard doors with a snap.

A uniformed constable was stationed outside Henry’s room. “All right there?” Lestrade asked. “Forensics still in the bathroom?”

“No sir, they’ve finished. Said to let them know when you’ve done so they can take the body and the rest of the evidence.”

“Good lad. Wait out here,” Lestrade said and pushed the door open.

Henry’s room was larger than Sherlock’s but gloomier, with heavy draperies and velvet furniture. Sherlock felt an itch of boredom just looking at it. He was beginning to have the sense the house was closing in around him, a claustrophobia born of the previous owners’ ghostly presence and the housekeeper’s callousness.

“Bathroom’s through there,” Lestrade said, gesturing.

Sherlock could smell the coppery tang of blood as soon as he stepped into the bedroom. He moved carefully, observing every detail of the oppressive room, and pushed the door open all the way. The body in the bathtub looked nothing like Henry Knight. It looked instead like a badly made waxwork copy, the maker getting the details right—the prominent ears and broad forehead—but completely missing any animating spirit.

Sherlock moved slowly toward the tub, careful to stay on the strips of plastic forensics must have laid out. He looked at the blood on the sides of the bathtub and on the floor. He leaned over to peer at the side closest to the wall. He inspected the cup and saucer on the little table, lifting it carefully with his gloved hand and sniffing: milk going sour, a hint of brandy. He knelt carefully and looked at the knife on the floor.

The knife was similar in style to the others in the block but not quite as good quality, and it was brand-new, the immaculate blade still razor-sharp. Just as he’d suspected. Sherlock stood and pulled off his gloves, tucking them into his pockets, and Lestrade’s phone rang.

The sound was so startling—only a very few alphas were allowed to carry mobile phones any more—that everyone jumped a little, even Sherlock. “Sorry,” Lestrade said, checking the screen. “It’s the DS. Yeah?” into the phone: “All right, tell me.” He moved a few steps away, back into the bedroom, leaving Watson and Mrs. Reilly crowded in the doorway.

Sherlock turned back to the bath and took a towel from the rack. He folded it in his hand and with the other carefully lifted Henry’s chilled, pallid arm from the cold water, resting it palm up on the towel. He looked at the cuts closely, wishing he had his old magnifying glass, and then replaced the arm gently in the bloody water and repeated the whole thing with the other arm. He stood, replaced the towel, and drew on his gloves. His senses felt oddly heightened: he could hear Watson and Mrs. Reilly breathing, the slow drip of water where he had caused it to slosh when he replaced the arm, Lestrade talking in the other room.

Sherlock turned and looked directly at Mrs. Reilly for the first time, pinning her with unexpectedness of his gaze. “You fool,” he said softly, “You stupid, stupid, fool. Did you really think you could get him this way? He’s set you up and left you to take the fall, because no one will believe a beta woman’s word over his.”

Reilly’s eyes narrowed but she did not flinch. ”And you think anyone will believe _yours_?”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “We’ll see.”

Lestrade abruptly appeared behind Mrs. Reilly. “Talked to the doctor,” he announced. “Basically verifies everything we’ve been told—he said Moriarty called him and asked him to come round as a favor, they’re old friends. Said he spoke with the housekeeper here and she told him about the mood swings and so on, so he recommended the hot baths and toddies; said a lot of omegas are nervous types…”

“Did he bother to speak to Brother Hosea directly?” Sherlock inquired acidly.

“Er.” Lestrade looked slightly discomfited. “Sergeant didn’t ask.”

Watson was looking at Lestrade with an odd expression on his face. “What did you say the doctor’s name was?”

“Ah…Frankland, Robert Frankland. Why?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sherlock interrupted. “Brother Hosea didn’t commit suicide. Mrs. Reilly killed him.”

Watson and Lestrade stared at him for a beat and then turned in unison to stare at the housekeeper, who was gazing at Sherlock with a sort of contemptuous pity. “Poor thing,” she said. “I’ve heard from some of the other housekeepers about them going rather mental after a bit. They’re not very stable emotionally, are they? I’ve heard it’s worse for the ones that are, you know.” She turned to the two alphas and dropped her voice as though to protect Sherlock’s feelings. “Barren.”

“Now look—“ Lestrade began but somewhat to Sherlock’s surprise Watson cut him off: “Let’s hear him out. Brother Bathsheba, you want to talk us through it?”

“Gladly.” He meant it; Sherlock loved this bit, always had. “Mrs. Reilly’s been sleeping with Commander Moriarty from the beginning; it’s obvious, just look at her underthings—well, the outline of her underthings under her clothes. Moriarty kept Brother Hosea in the country as long as he could and promised Mrs. Reilly he’d be packed off as soon as the babies were born, but then he told you he’d changed his mind, didn’t he? What did he say, that five babies were just too compelling, people would wonder if he didn’t ask? You were the one who told the doctor Hosea was having mood swings and asked for the pills. You gave him one at dinner, yes, but you put at least one more in the milk, maybe two, forensics can manage to check that much, maybe even a quantitative blood level depending on time of death, probably a lot more than a drop of brandy as well. That knife is brand new, it didn’t come from the kitchens, you bought it. Bridget will verify she’s never seen it before. No one would sell a knife to a handmaiden, especially a pregnant one, but they would to a housekeeper and if Lestrade’s lot haven’t gotten even less competent they should be able to find out who.

“So. You put the drugs in the milk. You came back up after the maids were in bed and Hosea was probably half unconscious by then—he couldn’t have put up much of a struggle, anyway—and you cut his wrists. Obvious. Hosea’s right handed, anyone can see that, so he would have cut his left wrist first, but you cut his right: it’s on the outside, far easier to reach. Impossible to mistake, look at the blood on the floor, far more on the right than the left; and look at the cuts as well: it’s clear from the depth that whoever did the cutting began proximally, closer to the elbow, and drew the knife toward the hand.” Sherlock held out his hand and drew a finger along his wrist to demonstrate. “No one would cut their own wrist that way, but you would if you were cutting someone else’s wrist.”

There was a brief silence as everyone caught up.

“My God,” Watson said finally, “That’s…incredible. Fantastic!”

Sherlock glanced at him in surprise but Lestrade said suddenly, “But why?” He was staring at Kitty Reilly, who was now glaring at Sherlock with such poisonous fury that he was vaguely surprised his robe wasn’t smoking. “Why kill him? Surely Hosea’d have been packed off to the country with the babies, at least for a few years, and Mrs. Reilly would have had him back to herself. I mean, she’s a beta, it wasn’t like she could marry him.”

“Because he manipulated her into doing it,” Sherlock said softly. “He didn’t want to bond with Hosea, but there would have been pressure on him to ask, after five babies. This way he’s off the hook. And by insisting you investigate it as a murder…” he blinked, suddenly, and stopped.

“What? What does he gain by that?” Lestrade asked.

Sherlock blinked again and forced himself to focus. “He gets rid of the only person with anything on him,” he said, looking directly at Reilly. “And gains everyone’s sympathy. Brand new father, hoping to be engaged, happiness destroyed by his jealous, delusional, scheming housekeeper. Not very stable emotionally, are they? Single beta women.”

“You’re wrong,” Reilly hissed. “I did it all myself. He was miserable with that spoilt silly omega, he was practically crying. I fixed it for him, and he’ll cover this up so we can be together, you wait and see.”

“You pathetic fool,” Sherlock said. He leaned forward so that his hood almost enclosed the two of them, staring directly into her eyes. “Don’t you understand yet? _Stop. Talking.”_

In the car, Sherlock let his head thump back against the seat and closed his eyes. He heard Watson saying something as he started the car but didn’t bother to listen. Too focused on what, exactly, Moriarty could be playing at. There was no need to have maneuvered Lestrade into bringing Sherlock in: a few discreet hints about his jealous housekeeper and Lestrade would surely have worked it out on his own; he wasn’t entirely dim. So why…?

“…really amazing, what you did back there,” Watson was saying.

Sherlock opened his yes. “Sorry, what?”

“I was saying that was amazing, all that stuff you guessed about the housekeeper.”

“I never guess,” Sherlock said, affronted. “I deduced.”

“How do you mean?”

“I observe and I draw conclusions from what I observe. Anyone could do the same if they bothered to truly look, but they don’t.”

“So you, what? You used to work for the police?”

“Of course not. I was a consulting detective, the only one in the world. I invented the job. When the police are out of their depth, which is always, they—“ Sherlock caught himself. “Used to call me.”

Watson’s eye were on his in the rear view mirror. “Because you observe.”

“Yes.”

“So all that, you didn’t hear it from your friend? You really worked it all out?”

“Yes. Just as I’ve worked out that you used to be an Army doctor and you were stationed in Afghanistan. You were devoted to king and country but you participated in the coup, almost certainly because the military took your wife. The mark from your wedding ring’s almost entirely faded but not quite, not if you know where to look. Breaking a bond is impossible if both parties are still alive and they’d never kill an omega, so, process of elimination, you were married to a beta and when the army forced you to end the marriage you joined the coup. The coup failed and you were shot—in the arm or shoulder, the mobility’s not as good in that arm-- and captured. Offered the chance to recant because you were an alpha, could have stayed in the Army at reduced rank, but you refused on principle and went to prison. The interesting question now is, why then abandon those same principles to join the Guardians _and_ the Eyes? Not self-interest or a change of heart; you’re not the type. Your wife would have been executed as punishment so you aren’t looking for her. Someone else? A sister, maybe, probably a littermate, an omega; she’s vanished and you think she might be in the Order. You’re trying to find her.”

Watson had kept his eyes on the road during Sherlock’s speech but Sherlock could still see the skin around his eyes crinkle in amusement. So: he was wrong about something. Good. Maybe Watson wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to correct him. What Sherlock really wanted to know was whether Captain Watson was actually there as part of some underground resistance, but he didn’t dare ask. Not yet.

“I do have an omega twin,” Watson said. He glanced back at Sherlock. “And it’s true I don’t know where she is now. But the government didn’t take my wife; she joined the coup first, because she was always braver than I was. She was an alpha.”

“An alpha,” Sherlock said in annoyance. “You’re _bent!_ There’s always something.”

Watson smiled again, but with less amusement this time. “There’s always something.”

So he had been wrong about at least one thing. Sherlock closed his eyes again and tried, once again, to puzzle out what Moriarty might be up to, but his thoughts kept circling back to what else Captain Watson might be hiding.


End file.
